Going Inside Out
by G.E Waldo
Summary: Rating: Mature. Bro-mance; pre-slash if you read between the lines. Summary: House is sent away for his own mind and his own good. Wilson must cope with the repercussions.
1. Chapter 1

**Going Inside-Out**

By GeeLady

Rating: Mature. Bro-mance only, no slash.

Summary: House is sent away for his own mind and his own good. Wilson must cope with the repercussions.

Disclaimer: House isn't mine. Though I wish he was. Slurp!

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Today I saw it in his face. A physical twitch manifesting a fear from his deep insides that even he was trying to ignore. House walked by and did not reply to my comment about the fatigue that had carved its canyons beneath his eyes and the obvious tremor in his long fingers.

And that's when fear from _my_ insides began to rise. It quickly surfaced and poked me, saying _House is losing it and this time it's for real_.

"House." I followed him anyway despite his silent dismissal of me and my worries.

But I couldn't help it. Not then and certainly not now.

I need those worries. I need mine and I carry his around for safekeeping because, true to his nature, House worried about very little. The man had been polluting his body for a decade with liver-damaging drugs. He ate bad food only when he found the time and drank gallons of alcohol, which he didn't need at all. Small wonder he did not care a lick about a little shaking or sleeplessness.

I care because without me, he would be lost.

I used to think that, anyway. Now, despite my caring, it seems he's halfway there.

I care because I love the dumb ass. "Are you okay?"

A thought managed to collect into one place in his mind and, after a minute, he looked at me curiously from behind his desk, his habitual hiding place. "Sure." Computer screen, porn and a metaphorical sign draped over him; it said _Fuck off._

House had his charms.

I don't think I've heard a rusty hinge that sounded worse. The ragged vocals tried once more, if only to hint for me to scram. "Why?"

More denials would undoubtedly be forthcoming so I dropped it, smiled my little twisted corner of the mouth smile -- to reassure him of my gentle friendship (an affect he didn't buy for a second) -- and left. I felt his eyes at my back all the way down the corridor as though his eyes turned corners.

I think House recognized that he was finally crumbling, and I think what scared him more than that was that I recognized it too. His mental fetal position screamed at me like a beast in pain. At that point, I wasn't sure which of us was more scared.

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We got our answers the day House failed to show up for work and, at the behest of his frightened team, urged me to check on him. They all remembered the last time a team member had not showed up and none of them were anxious to discover the reason. Taub was quiet with worry over his place in the world. Salary and wife and family life were at stake if House was lying somewhere cold.

Foreman and Hadley kept looking at each other, sharing the silent memory of their colleague's dead body. Even his blood, spilled out over floor in a grotesque puddle, had chilled by the time anyone had missed him.

Cameron looked sick. I imagine House had never quite left her mind and hopeful body but, somehow House did that to you.

I found him in bed, sleeping heavily. House was a light sleeper -- though he could sleep almost anywhere -- but he was groggy and sighed at me when I roused him and he rolled over.

"Hey. Are you sick? Cuddy's been trying to call you." He had slept in his clothes. I wondered how many days worth.

"Which is why I've been trying not to answer."

At least his sarcastic streak was in proper order. "Are you going to come to work?"

"No."

That was the first day of my fears realized.

House stayed home another week, playing sick, and did little but sleep and watch television. When I dropped in, his responses to me were slower each day and more and more unconcerned, like the effort to speak even a few words was draining. Like the world around him had faded to grays and wasn't the most real part of his day anymore.

By the end of the second week, when House had given up eating and showering -- when I decided it was time to call an ambulance -- he didn't resist. He didn't even protest.

My fear became terror. "Jesus, House . . ."

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Once House saw the barred windows, he woke up and fought the orderlies and the leather restraints like a crazed animal. I've seen that sort of thing on the Nature Network. Some mountain Lion or Ocelot is caught in a sack, anesthetized, blind and helpless to its surroundings and in ignorance of its own plight. It stays very still, unaware of the passage of time or the scenery that's changing around it without its knowledge.

Then its captors would open the bag and stand back and the wild creature would explode from the sack's depths, all teeth and claws and snarls of fury with no mind to escape anywhere in particular but simply to escape.

House, no less exotic than a wild cat, woke up and found himself about to be made an involuntary guest of a mental hospital and fought like a wild thing just awake from a drug.

I guess his human mind understood, then, that this cage might be permanent. Not even the totally sane would go quietly with that news.

So one can hardly expect quiet surrender from the crazy.

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Insanity is especially hard on those who suspect it within themselves to begin with. House was perhaps the smartest man I have ever met. He understood he was other than normal in the mental department, a little quirky in the habits department and frankly demented in the entertainment department. Hookers aside, House derived mountains of satisfaction from figuring out, not only the mystery, but the tiniest details of it. The motivations, if mysteries have motive. Truth was his ally and lies his best friend and he used either or both to achieve his goal of understanding…whatever was the puzzling flavor-of-the-moment.

Medical mysteries of course. The pathetic conundrum of my screwed up relationships with wives and women. Families – any but his own.

Whatever could not be explained, he tried to explain. Needed to. Like breathing and brain food. Only himself he left well enough alone. House was afraid of his own mind. Over the years I had grown to know and love him and only understand him a little and even I was afraid of his rat maze of a brain. Even worse was if House was afraid, such a smart man, then there was reason to be. Right?

The admitting nurse paged the on-call and after a few minutes a tired looking man in his mid-fifties and thin as tinsel appeared from behind a door with no name.

He greeted me and caterpillar eyebrows arched their backs when he found out who was being admitted to his little crazy corner of an only slightly less crazy world.

For some reason I had an urge to slug him. How dare he muse over the sight of my best friend's craziness. Geniuses have the right to go nuts as much as anyone and House had racked up enough points. He deserved the executive suite in this stinking nut-nest.

House was, in sequence, tranq-ed, strapped to a Gurney and wheeled to his very own white-walled blank space they had the nerve to call quarters. I wasn't allowed to say goodbye or anything.

I was asked to sign papers of course, being House's medical proxy, and I obeyed. Three months for starters.

I walked out of that place with enough guilt to make up for everything Nixon and Clinton ever did put together.

I slammed the door to my car and started the engine, wanting to not drive away but go back in there and take House by his shoulders and bring him home.

Instead I rested my forehead on the steering wheel and sobbed like the betrayer I felt like. It was the first time I'd cried since Amber died over a year ago and I hated that this felt like a death too. Living and dying were pretty well the same thing in a nut house.

I drove away and wondered when they'd let me visit or if House would speak to me when I did. In my pocket was the phone number of the psychiatrist who would be treating him and a cheque stub to the tune of twelve thousand dollars. Standard going rate for three months mental therapy.

I stopped and paid House's landlord another thirty-five hundred dollars to keep his apartment and everything in it safe, promising to stop by once or twice a week to collect the mail and make sure the taps hadn't burst.

Small favors in payment for sending my best friend away to become just another mental patient at New Jersey Trenton. The place was a mausoleum to insanity. Its echoing halls and crumbling, castle-like wings all but shouted: _We house crazy people._

Cuddy will, in her sweetness, assure me it's all for the best. She wanted House back, whole and sane like I did and will say to me something about it every day probably.

Her face was so full of twisted guilt when we agreed to conspire against House and get him committed, it made her almost ugly.

When I arrived back at Plainsboro, House's team was sitting around, trying to look like they weren't discussing their boss's sudden insanity.

House's chair was pushed under his desk and his computer screen had been turned off. No one entered the office and no one dare even use his phone.

All was still and quiet like a crime had been witnessed there.

Like someone dearly loved had died.

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To be continued ASAP

ALSO: Part VI of Fairy God Doctor is almost ready.


	2. Chapter 2

**Going Inside-Out**

**Part II**

By GeeLady

Rating: Mature. Bro-mance only, no slash. Maybe later there might be slash. So the rating might change to Adult only.

Summary: House is sent away for his own mind and his own good. Wilson must cope with the repercussions.

Disclaimer: House isn't mine. Though I wish he was. Slurp!

The alternating 1st-3rd Person/POV's are intentional. James Wilson's observation of what is happening to his friend as opposed to the third person POV's of those treating him. (I hope I can pull this off).

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The next time I saw House, he was ten pounds lighter. It also seemed to me as though one or two light bulbs upstairs were now not just flickering, but had burnt out. That was just the drugs he would say. Same excuse, different circumstances, only now it's me saying them.

Outside, inside; nothing in life really changes. The present is the same as it used to be.

"Hey." I sat down beside him on the bed and he didn't look at me much. One, quick glance; a flicker of his blue eyes; a glance from his torment. I thought my heart might turn to lead and sink into the earth.

He looked like himself well enough though, as I stared (I couldn't help it. It was an invasion of his privacy but I needed to. I was terrified of forgetting what he looked like, and every day I spent in the world of free humans was another day I never saw his face), it seemed a wispy and fading stranger had taken a stand inside his body, and even he was not looking back.

But House was never a man you could think of as a fading soul. In fact, I can't remember the last time I didn't see him storming into Cuddy's, or my, office, cracking a loud joke in the cafeteria at my expense, or twisting his features into the faces of a thousand men. Well, except for those four awful months. The brief period where I had made the decision to transform from long-time best friend into an ungrateful prick. Thinking back on it later, I am ashamed to recall that I never said a proper goodbye. Not even one thank you to his voluntary skull fracture, never mind his, once more, near-death experience - this time on my behalf.

Who _was_ that James Wilson?

It seemed to me, sitting on his hard single bed with the overly starched sheets and a stiff orderly standing guard over his ward's sickest, we exchanged reluctant truths in our tiny looks. It seemed to me that there was no one I knew inside him anymore. This stranger asked me why I was there by remaining silent. He wondered who I was by ignoring me.

I wondered if kissing him might shock some recognition into him. If so I would have done it. Absolutely.

"Did I do this to you?" I asked him, loathing myself for burdening him with any requirement to explain himself when I already knew the answer. Of course it was partly my fault. And hating myself again for wondering why he occasionally needed strapping down and drugging until his eyes were more black than blue. I was loath to admit to myself that I had neglected the one person in my life who really did need my help. Not the wife number one, two or three. Not my dog, not even my brother who had got by on his own decisions for fifteen years without me to save him. Can't save anyone who doesn't want saving.

On and off House had needed me. Maybe even wanting saving. Just now and then when even he didn't know how to stop him own tendencies to self destruction. He needed reins and had always looked to me to provide them.

I looked back on the months since Amber's death, my abandonment of him and my return to only a vague semblance of the care I used to show. Leaving him alone is for his own good. Cuddy and I had that conversation more than once. How many times did she come to my office and remind me that he needed a friend?

Why, then, did she bother coming to _my_ office?

Maybe that was another warp inside him that House recognized: his quiet need for Wilson. His unspoken but gentle affection for that idiot.

We were two perfectly normal looking men in a weird, asexual, osmotic, co-dependent love-in and if we didn't have it, neither of us could be happy. I've long ago given up trying not to be fucked up. Looking at House, normal seems very boring to me now.

Funny thing about envy and hate -- they walk down the street together all the time. People hate him but have envied our friendship; the closeness of it. The deep-seated naturalness and connection we have and have had almost since the beginning. The ease at which we speak sparks jealousy in them. The orbit around which we circle each other ready to scream and accuse one another, or die to save one another baffles them.

It's almost to late for regrets that I didn't recognize this sooner. The flawed things we treasure. Only we don't realize it until they have burned up or gone missing. House seems to have managed both.

I remind myself that I did almost go to jail for him. I guess I'm not all bad sometimes when it comes to this brilliant but oddly put together man.

To me, normal is a world without House and that's unthinkable. The world needs an outsider like House to point his separate, clearer thought in its direction, and let it know how even more screwed up than he _it_ is. House's slightly insane but stark truth-telling puts the world and its fakery to endless shame.

I love him for that.

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"Greg?" Doctor Tracy Gooden addressed his newest patient.

Doctor Gregory House stared back at the shrouded figure with the clipboard, while ignoring him altogether. A trick perfected over so short a time, it might have been congenital. Though anything could be learned if you put in the hours.

Doctor Gooden often thought much the same. "Are you going to join us today?"

His newest charge was there without consent and, if could be judged by his lack of interest, devoid of joining in anything that went on around him.

"Purpose has stopped for this patient." Alissa Shane had stepped up beside him and he had not noticed her until she spoke. She was a quick minded psychiatrist and had made similar remarks when Greg House had been admitted.

Gooden supposed it was true. Mutism, the books called it but a Walking Mental Coma fit better. "Well," Gooden answered her. "We better jump start it then." He took a brief moment to admire her tiny red-headed figure. Shane had entered the medical world in which he was already a veteran late in life. But, at nearly fifty-five years of age, had lost little of her petite looks nor the impatient manner of the young. She was older and, having graduated from a newer school of thought on mental illness and severe depressive episodes, she was not one to hold her opinion.

She muttered, "Upheaval." Voicing another little opinion, "Utter and all-encompassing fatigue." She added. "Down to the cellular level."

Gooden had read similar lines of reason in several of the latest scientific and medical journals. "Possible." He agreed with reserve.

Shane said no more and left to continue her rounds. Gooden had seen the light in her eye, though. Something about House interested her; had captured her curiosity. Well, perhaps he might take advantage of that if or when the time came. So far Doctor House had not taken to him one bit and Gooden was already having a bad year, as far as patients went. Lots of admissions, few releases. Fewer cures. A new thought rendered here and there could hardly hurt.

With a sigh for his lack of progress, he excused himself from Gregory House.

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Alissa Shane made certain to pass by the common area at least once a day to see if Gooden's newest charge was out and about or confined to his room. Most days, Gooden let him out and the man who used to be the famous Doctor Gregory House sat in a chair and stared at the television or leaned against the window and smoked a prohibited cigarette that the staff knew the patients were getting from the orderlies, but security so far had been unable to catch any of them in the act of smuggling the contraband in.

Shane figured a cigarette or two, if it helped them feel better for a few minutes, was as good a treatment as painting a picture and pretending to enjoy it. Don't they know the mentally sick hate lying most of all?

She approached him this day as well, having done so almost every time she saw him. And this day, too, he kept his head turned away and stared through the thick mesh to the world beyond his reach or caring, instead of at her.

"I'd like to join in on your group sessions with Doctor Gooden." She said. "That is, if he approves -- but most especially only if _you_ approve."

When she said the final two words of her request, for the first time he actually looked at her.

She had to catch her breath. Though careful not to show too much emotion, she could not help but stare back.

The experiences -- the quivering power for _life_ -- packed into those bright irises, was difficult to tear herself away from. They were as vibrantly blue as a robin's egg but in a frame of broken shells and violence.

The scattered fragments of him were evident in his angry glance that looked away just as quickly. Such beautiful eyes set in a man so furious, so tired, so sick of what life had taken and taken again from him while giving nothing back to fill up the empty spaces, that he had found himself, at the age of fifty-one, ill to death of loneliness and disappointment. Ill enough that his body had agreed with mind and had metaphorically, if not physically, collapsed in on itself.

The mentally ill are far more tired than crazy. More thoroughly sad than physically torn. More deeply bruised and denied the time to heal before the next blow and the one after that, than unwilling to try. Mental illness was a kind of civilian shell shock. Gregory House had been through a war that his colleagues had witnessed but the festering wounds of which he was keeping to himself. His part in it had been his alone and his injuries had gone deep. Perhaps untreated since the beginning.

James Wilson had given Gooden the run-down of course. Shane had heard about all the terrible events of the last few years or so that had finally lead Greg to this place and time, where the future was in hands other than his own and he no longer cared who that was.

Shane had read similar cases where the depressed stayed down, stayed quiet and still because being "crazy" meant finally getting some sleep. It meant the only struggle now was to fill their days with calm and lassitude, a delight few of them could even remember until their incarceration here or elsewhere.

The absence of happiness seems a terrible sacrifice to those untutored by it, but it being finally gone also meant they would never feel the disappointment of its inevitable end. The idea was not that the depressed have no hope or believe that nothing good will ever happen again; it is the absolute state of certitude that they will never feel the smallest trace of happiness _about_ those things. The held, unequivocal belief that the joy in those things that any normal person would take for granted, a promotion or a new relationship or a new car, would ever elude them.

The profoundly depressed understand like no other, that experience empty of joy is an event of the clock and nothing else. And, therefore, something painful.

"_May_ I attend?" She asked him. Answer me, she pleaded into his silence while he offered no answer from it. Only his suffering-on-empty stare at the sadly neglected trees overlooking the cracked parking lot spoke, and it, like them, without a sound.

Then, as a creature surfacing from the darkness and spouting for a single breath of air, he wearily and deeply sighed.

Shane was elated. That sigh was nigh on a vigorous handshake from across a chasm that spanned three feet between their bodies. Three feet, up until now, had been three thousand. An was an offering. It was his current and only equivalent of a yes and everything he had managed to gather together - his whole will.

Greg House turned back to the window then, ignoring her once more. The effort of the expelled breath had fatigued him. The presence of another human, so close and having the need to speak upon his tired ears and watch for his uninterested, unrevealed reactions, had drained him for the day.

Shane wanted Gooden to reverse that for him. She wanted to reverse it.

Suddenly, Gregory House was the most intriguing patient she had ever encountered in her short four year career and in his case, the sigh was her first win. It was a tiny door fit for a mouse, and he had opened it up for her.

For the quiet doctor-patient a month and half on ward without a word spoken to anyone, it was an enormous step.

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Part III ASAP


	3. Chapter 3

**Going Inside-Out**

**Part III**

By GeeLady

Rating: Mature. Bro-mance only. Maybe later there might be slash. So the rating might change to Adult only.

Summary: House is sent away for his own mind and his own good. Wilson must cope with the repercussions.

Disclaimer: House isn't mine. Though I wish he was. Slurp!

The alternating 1st-3rd Person/POV's are intentional. James Wilson's observation of what is happening to his friend as opposed to the third person POV's of those treating him. (I hope I can pull this off).

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"Doctor House."

Gooden's patient was seated at his usual spot on the wide window ledge, in the warmth of the sunshine. A little light trying to get in from the cold.

Kind of like sick people.

Doctor Alissa Shane approached him with the rhythm of her steps unaltered. No need to sneak up in caution. Don't show fear, the new books advised.

Fear the dangerous, not the sick.

"Doctor Gooden thought we - that is, you and I might have a private session." She left the offer hanging for a few seconds. "A private talk, away from all these people."

That at least brought his eyes around and he looked straight at her. But his scrutiny was overtly suspicious, as though she secretly held a hypodermic full of Dilaudid behind her back, and her real intent was to shoot him up.

Alissa was about to drop the whole thing when

"Where?"

By its instant hard thumping, her heart rejoiced before even her mind caught that the sound she had just heard was him talking. For the first time, he had spoken. A wary, watered down word barely recognizable as English emerged from a throat narrowed from iscthemic pain.

"I thought perhaps your room?" At seeing his reaction to that, she quickly amended "O-or the sitting room?"

Greg House stared at her for a few seconds more before turning his head back to the window and the expanding pink of morning. All patients were awakened at six-thirty for breakfast at seven. Only the very sickest didn't have to adhere to the ticking whip of the clock. But then the very sickest weren't allowed out of their rooms unless escorted by a nurse, an orderly, or their doctor.

Alissa thought House had done about all the speaking he planned to do when he gave her his second surprise. "Outside." He whispered hardly above an expiration, "I want to go outside."

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Alissa spent the next hour explaining House's request to Gooden, and thanking him for allowing her to take part in his patient's therapy.

"Certainly it can't hurt." Gooden said of the outdoor session proposed to him. "I've known of patients who never saw the outside world again, until death gave their soul or spirit or what-have-you an unrestricted pass."

Alissa lead the way as House, cocooned in two warm blankets to protect him from the biting wind, flanked her in a wheelchair pushed by a meaty looking male aid. A second one took up the rear. Gooden had written up an order for two to go so to keep watch on his famous patient who'd prepaid in full and in cash.

_Diagnostics pays well._ Was Gooden's thought as he watched his charge escorted through the gardens bolted and alarmed door, along with the pretty psychiatrist.

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Alissa was disappointed to see that no cane had been issued to Doctor House and tried not to stare as he limped heavily from the wheelchair to the picnic table by the only clutter of growth within the high fenced grounds. These were small, weeping birch trees which branches were too thin to support any significant poundage. Weight-bearing limbs gave the suicidal bad ideas.

Beyond the high mesh fence that circled the whole complex stood growths of pine and elm trees, their height and breadth and the bright green leaves of May that bragged of their own good, long lives replete with scratching Grey squirrels and perching Sparrows.

House's face was screwed up into a twist of ridges and valleys and, despite the chill in the still early spring air, he was sweating a little. He kept one hand tightly clamped on his right thigh (she had read the physical health back-records of House - almost his entire clinical history and it was a page turner), and eased himself down onto the thick wood seat.

She wondered if the Tylenol 3's Gooden had prescribed were much help against the chronic pain that had so often been mentioned in almost every one of House's previous work-ups.

"Is this okay?" She asked him when his face finally eased back into its natural shape. He had a nice face, she decided. Not a great looker but he possessed a certain soft charm in the thin, straight nose set in a long and lined hollow face. His narrow brows were set low over Cornflower-blue eyes. His mouth, with the corners of the lips appearing to turn ever-downward, were framed by rough, unshaven cheeks above a slightly receding chin.

He was not the boy next door. He was the boy across and down the street who stood and watched longingly as the pretty girl walked to school with the boy next door.

Doctor House alternately stared at the ground, across the grass and then to his long, entwined fingers.

Alissa had readied a number of questions but felt that starting out strictly clinical might not be the most advantageous way to begin therapy with a man unwilling to provide answers of any kind.

She had noticed the callouses on the ends of his fingers. "You play?" She didn't but it was as good a place to begin as anywhere.

House answered with a rude chuckle, as though she was so obviously a ninny it was ridiculous.

She wasn't a ninny but knew he had no reason one way or another to doubt it or even care if she was. Another try.

"Not one for small talk, huh?"

To that he said nothing.

"Your friend, Doctor Wilson, is very worried about you." Knowing it sounded as if she was trying to guilt him into speaking up, she quickly added. "I think he didn't want to leave you here."

At the mention of Doctor Wilson's name House's face, almost imperceptibly, softened and the far away look in his eyes turned just a little toward home. He nodded.

Alissa decided that probably up front, naked truth was the best policy with this patient. It was her preferred introductory method for most patients, providing they were lucid enough to comprehend its implications and well enough to carry it without buckling.

"You know, don't you, that you won't get out of here unless you start trying to get well?"

He closed his eyes and nodded again.

"Do you _want_ to get well?" She asked. "I don't want to waste my time with someone who doesn't want to. I have other patients I could be using this time for. Patients who want to go home."

She could see by the back and forth movement of his eyes that he was thinking about it.

"I won't think badly of you if you don't want to leave here -- that is whether you even care what I think about you or not. I don't know you well enough to think or feel anything about you, so you're free from the obligation of putting on your good face. Because if you were actually good and fine, we'd never have met."

She knew he probably understood all that. He was a doctor and, by reputation, a superb one. But doctor's make bad patients. Genius doctors (and from what she had read of him and gleaned from a few of his published articles she had located, Gregory House was a genius), make even worse mental patients. They usually know all about psychotherapy, enough to either agree with all or some of its methods or to dismiss it outright. Or to screw with the therapist for a laugh and _then _dismiss it.

Ironically, a genius is a tough nut to crack since most of them are already a little cracked to begin with. Big cracks that threatened to split them in half or multi-fissures that had brought them to the point of shattering.

Alissa Shane believed House had already shattered. Quietly, before any of his colleagues or friends even knew what was happening, he had imploded and it had been some time before the reverse shock wave sucked them in. Suddenly they were awake and looking around for the person that used to be there, but only finding a strange-eyed impostor.

That was often the way it went with both the genius and the everyday man.

_Mental illness makes equals of us all. _

"Do you _want_ to talk to me, Doctor House?" _He's terrified beyond any reason he can find to explain why. The will is gone, the hope has vanished. The hope for hope is almost dead. _

And vulnerability, the most frightening thing of all for one who is urged to put themselves in the hands of the very same creatures who had proved again and again to be untrustworthy of that vulnerability. Creatures who scattered the word love around like they were seeding the yard. Creatures who had no idea, with their well intended attempts at parenthood or self-emoting charity, that they were poisoning the soil.

_Child abuse?_ Alissa wondered. If so, it had gone unreported.

Drug addiction. Alcoholism. Self destructive behaviors set in motion to prove the destruction is justified; the indisputably believed vision that for years Greg had held about himself and underlined as truth: that he was just as unworthy or deeply flawed as parents and whomever had always insisted. He had been to them, somehow or other and in a manner they could not explain to him or even to themselves, unfulfilling, even useless. Unlovable on any level.

Somewhere along the road in such a life of someone like Gregory House, suicidal ideation's appear as one possible choice of action. An alternative (albeit a harsh and permanent one) to ease the fear that the self-hate or the loneliness or the nameless monster that was the mental pain might never leave.

A patient of hers had once said that fantasies of suicide were a comfort to him. It was kind of like yelling at the boss. If your boss acts like a prick, you know you can't yell at him because he'd fire you. You'd lose your job. To commit suicide, the yelling, means to lose your life, the job.

But wouldn't it be nice, the young man had asked, to be able to yell at your boss and _not_ get fired? To commit suicide but _not_ die?

To kill the pain without dying is what the young man had meant and such fantasies acted as a type of pressure-release valve. A brief respite. The thought of the safekeeping of the job is often the only thing that holds back a pissed-off assistant who is sick of constant abuse. The small fragile thread of wanting to live is often the only thing holding back the clinically depressed from cutting his losses and signing off.

The greatest risk arose when the patient no longer cared about the "job", and destructive behaviors like cutting, addictions or suicide are made (as Alissa had come to learn more and more from the patients she had worked with), not in the emotional burning heat of the moment, but repeatedly weighed and debated within the long, cold winter of reason.

Suicide was most often a deliberate, viable choice picked from options long hid and harbored.

Alissa had thought it an interesting, if highly dangerous, line of reasoning.

Gregory House offered her a downward twitch of his head. "It's not going to do any good."

She caught her breath. The invisible man had finally shown himself.

_Wow!_ Alissa was careful to avoid showing on her face the triumph she felt. "Why do you believe that?"

"If almost dying changes nothing, why would _talking_?" The words had dropped from his mouth like rocks, their weight enormous.

Their meaning, however, was clear: Greg House was tired. He was so tired, he had abdicated the responsibility of his repairs to others. If they repaired him, fine. If they didn't, that was fine too. Why should there be the need to talk about something to straightforward?

But she knew that he, of course, also knew differently. Probably even believed differently and he _had_ to talk about it. He _must_ face the ugly reality of his mental illness or he would never go home again.

Surely there were things in his life he did not want to lose? She would need to speak to Doctor Wilson at some point also.

Alissa and Gregory had been in conversation all of five minutes but for him it had already morphed into an unbelievably long and exhausting session. Still he had, in a roundabout way, said yes.

Alissa didn't yet understand Gregory House. There were depths, and depths of depths for them to dig through. But he had spoken two whole sentences. At least the shovel was finally in the soil.

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	4. Chapter 4

**Going Inside-Out**

**Part IV**

By GeeLadyf

Rating: Mature. Bro-mance only. Maybe later there might be slash. So the rating might change to Adult only.

Summary: House is sent away for his own mind and his own good. Wilson must cope with the repercussions. SPOILERS FOR SEASON 5 and speculation of what might come after.

Disclaimer: House isn't mine. Though I wish he was. Slurp!

_The alternating 1st-3rd Person/POV's are intentional. James Wilson's observation of what is happening to his friend as opposed to the third person POV's of those treating him. (I hope I can pull this off)._

"Depression is a condition which is almost unimaginable to anyone who has not known it."

_Andrew Solomon - The Noonday Demon_

Alissa walked her rounds and met with her few patients here and there. She liked to believe that interacting with them, even a little, outside of the clinical arena told them that they were still normal people. Sick, but normal.

Sickness of body. Sickness of mind. Sick was not crazy. Sick was un-well. Sick was hurting, illness, pain and discomfort. No one expected someone with a badly broken leg to rally in just a few days, shake it off and stop making excuses for using the crutches. Why was a broken spirit or heart then only cause for scorn? As organs go, the heart is a pretty important one. As whatever souls are, people seemed to want to keep theirs.

Alissa had learned a lot of things about mental illness she had not known prior to her internship. Like mental illness and depression, contrary to common belief, is not born of a couple of bad school grades, a bout of flu, a death or a nasty divorce. It is born of hundreds of such things -- or just one that never reached any recognizable end. Even some in the medical community still feared mental illness as though it were catching or scorned it as though it were "all in the mind", as though the mind being sick was something fantastic or imaginary. But major depression was not a thing that could be passed along from one person or group to another like the measles; giving them all something to talk about and share with understanding.

Depression was a thing mental patients endured totally on their own. Besides the terrible mental pain, agony, hopelessnes and fright, the gargantuan stigma of one's name on the patient list of any mental institution was a label that could never be erased from the mind of the patient or anyone he comes to know after. It was the whole bars on the high windows and screams from the dungeon image people feared.

_Do people actually go into those places? Or come out again? Can you really cure a mind?_

Alissa knew it was an unfortunate truth that the aura of crazy surrounding a former institute inmate hardly ever completely fades from the consciousness of on-lookers. A man might possibly find, with enough medicine, stretches and perhaps chants from his mind of "I feel good. I am healthy. I am strong", that his back ache might conceivably go away. People will slap him on the back, congratulate him on his great strength of mind, and turn their attention to new matters.

The mind, however, cannot turn to itself for relief from its own pain. Other than to the charity of strangers in white coats, mental pain has no where to go for help.

Alissa found it ironic that hopeless people were put in a place that claimed to be a haven and then hurry up and treat them as though they were so crazy, they could not be trusted. It was only the strongest patient, Alissa had found, those still in possession of enough fight to live, who find freedom again and a wobbly spot in the world on which to stand.

Doctor Alissa Shane had a keen eye for a sick person and she believed this man House, despite his continuing silent denial, wanted to feel better. She wished to further that goal by not speaking herself.

Once committed, the first thing a rehab' or mental patient discovers is the sudden lack of autonomy. Rights vanish. Humanness is draped in stringless pajamas. It is ground down and handed out in little vials rattling around in paper cups.

And fear, existing on the wards in one form or another for each patient, becomes their daily, overshadowing companion. Fear for each his own mind in particular. Fear for the future in general. Terror that even if the future arrives, it will offer nothing but more pain or more emptiness.

If the only freedom she could give Greg House, if the only choice, was the right to speak or not to speak, it would be his.

House, the silent, sullen, angry man who sat opposite her on the heavy wood picnic bench was Doctor Gooden's patient and Gooden's therapy was group-discussion based along with appropriate medications, and Alissa knew by training and maybe instinct too that this man wasn't likely to unburden himself before a room full of strangers.

Though pills were another thing entirely. The only shame in being crazy was the human stigma. Pills didn't care how you felt.

Somehow, she had begun to deeply care how this man felt and desperately hoped he might choose to talk to her if she gave him the freedom to make the choice when and how to break his quietude. She'd seen plenty of sad people in her short career. Plenty of broken, exhausted, angry people, and House was all of those. But not since her first year rotations had she'd seen eyes so empty of hope.

This was the third time for their outings to the picnic table. The third time where he had said nothing. Since that single sentence on that first day when he had asked to go outside, he had not spoken to her.

She was feeling more and more useless as a therapist and wondered if she had presumed too much.

She looked up at the sky. It was almost overcast and the wind was a cool, mussing her short hair about her forehead. She shivered in her thin sweater over her doctor's coat. Neither was much protection from the late spring damp. Opposite her, Greg House seemed oblivious to anything but the trees to their right at which he stared unblinkingly.

But not a zombie stare. His was a thinking stare, eyes that looked at the world still, like a man on a directionless boat who is drifting out to sea while he stares to the shrinking land in the distance. There was longing there, even so hopeless as it might be, as the water takes him away. A fading glow for rescue, maybe.

Alissa decided to enjoy the view with him and turned her body so she was facing the same direction as her patient and looked at the weeping birch trees, their trembling arms flapping in the breeze like wild and loose limbed adolescents. How beautiful they were. She didn't often notice such things. She was not a romantic and preferred books over walks in the park. But still . . .

Alissa broke her decided upon rule and spoke. "I never noticed before how delicate they are. And pretty - the bark, it's so white -- "

She turned to look at him and was shocked to find his face wet.

Alissa had never seen anyone cry like him. He was absolutely silent about it. No choking, no hitching of breath, no sniffles. All that betray the emotion he must have been feeling somewhere inside, were long, cold, tears that ran in two tiny rivers, following the rough whiskered contours of his face, to finally emerge and drip off his scruffy chin onto the table. The pure, unaffected grief in the frozen portrait of him left her stunned. Under the weight of his simple, unbidden, almost unconscious gesture, though, she thought she could see or, as unscientific as it sounded in her mind, perhaps _feel_ some life.

And where there was life . . .

Alissa knew there was one person in the world who cared about Gregory House and she had his number stuffed in her sweater pocket. Gooden seemed quite surprised at her report of Greg's crying but cautioned her about calling the Wilson fellow. "One bout of crying is certainly good news --it shows he's still capable of feeling -- but it's hardly progress."

Alissa didn't think so but, for a day or so at least, seceded to his greater experience and did not phone.

Finally, she felt there could be little harm in at least up-dating Doctor Wilson on his friend's well being, if not progress. Gooden agreed to that much.

"Hello? Is this Doctor Wilson?"

The smaller voice from twenty miles away answered "Yes."

"This is Doctor Alissa Shane. I work with Doctor Gooden."

A sharp sucking in of air, "Is everything alright? Is House okay?"

"-Uh, yes, yes. Doctor Gooden wanted me to let you know that Doctor House is doing fine so far."

"Doing fine in what way?"

She could hear the irritation in his voice. Small wonder, she was talking to him like he was a layman. This man had been -- _was_ -- Gregory House's close friend. Close she assumed because Doctor Wilson was House's medical proxy, over and above his own mother or any girlfriend, if there was one. "Doctor Wilson. I know this might seem a strange question but, that is, . . . does Doctor House ever. . .um, does he _cry_?"

A seeming great weariness flowed from the other end of the phone. "I saw House cry, a little, about seven months ago." Wilson paused. "It was the first time in ten years."

"Would you say he was, and please forgive my bluntness, sane at those times?"

She could tell he was a little puzzled by the question. "Of course. I mean, upset at the time of course, his leg . . ."

Alissa nodded to herself. She had read Greg House's complete history of course.

" . . .and his . . . he was in a relationship at the time. It was a casualty."

A hard break-up. Healthy man turned into an unhealthy one by constant pain. Chronic pain was a samurai that came at you with a dull sword. Wack, wack, wack, but never any blood. No visible injury but damage just the same. Dull or not, in the end the sword won.

"Doctor Wilson. Yesterday we were sitting outside. Gregory and I, well, he likes to sit outside on a bench." Despite her age, she felt a fool for some reason while talking to this man. This man who's education exceeded her own by several years, who knew Gregor House better than anyone. Better than her for certain. She felt that she was holding out a silly drawing House had made, expecting Wilson to agree that it meant great progress. She didn't care. This seemed important. Again, unscientific. _Alissa, you're __embarrassing__ your degree._

"What are you trying to tell me, Doctor Shane?"

"Something good I'm hoping." She took a breath. "Doctor Wilson, yesterday Doctor House _cried_."

-

-

-

There was the sudden release, now, of a breath held at the other end of the line. And when Doctor Wilson next spoke, she could hear her own tiny hope in his words. "that's . . .good news. Really, it's good news -- but can you tell me, do you know _why_ he was crying?"

She felt she was letting him down by her answer. "No." But Alissa, while accepting that she wasn't always the sharpest needle in the drawer, knew by training and experience that insane people who still have the capacity of mental-self preservation , who are still connected to the world, even if only by a filament of spun silk, _yawn _and _cry_. If a crazy person can do that, he is not insane at all.

"I'm sorry. I'm not sure why. We weren't talking. He hasn't spoken to me yet, not really what you'd call a conversation. But he'd cried. And if he cried, that means he's sad and if he's sad, it means he's still _feeling_ things." She knew that was very good news.

It was so simple, it sounded almost naive. Even stupid. But the ability to recognize one's own feeling was a quality reserved for those still circling the world of the living and the sane.

"And if he's still feeling things, that means he can feel _good _again."

Doctor Wilson asked when he might come to visit, but she believed it was too soon and he reluctantly agreed. She thanked him and hung up.

Maybe Greg House wouldn't feel that goodness for a long time, and maybe not to the level he had before in his life, but she believed he would.

Tears were a wonderful thing in the sick. Tears were the mourning of the flesh.

Gregory House hated himself, or his life. Or _both. _

But his crying proved one thing: he still loved his own body and soul enough to feel sorry for himself.

AN:

I would like to state that I am fully aware that most depressed people, particularly those who have or are suffering from a major depressive episode, do not all end up in a mental institution, nor are they "crazy". For the purposes of this story, House has ended up in a mental hospital. But in his case, I have portrayed his illness as extreme.

It might interest you to know that less than twenty percent of people who suffer from moderate to severe depression ever receive the help they deserve and need to finally get well in a complete sense.

I was one of the lucky few.

The fear and stigma continue....

Part V ASAP

"What is happening to you in depression . . .seems to be very much wrapped up in what is _about to_ happen to you. Among other things, you feel you are _about to_ die. The dying would not be so bad, but the living at the _brink _of dying, the _not-quite-_over-the-geographical-edge condition, is _**horrible**_."


	5. Chapter 5

**Going Inside-Out**

**Part V**

By GeeLady

Rating: Mature. Bro-mance only. Maybe later there might be slash. So the rating might change to Adult only.

Summary: House is sent away for his own mind and his own good. Wilson must cope with the repercussions. SPOILERS FOR SEASON 5 and speculation of what might come after.

Disclaimer: House isn't mine. Though I wish he was. Slurp!

_The alternating 1st-3rd Person/POV's are intentional. James Wilson's observation of what is happening to his friend as opposed to the third person POV's of those treating him. (I hope I can pull this off)._

_-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------_

_"Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance." _

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Wilson waited in the tiny office of Alissa Shane and listened with careful ears.

No screams. There were bars on the windows but no crazed creature with wild hair shaking them with white fists to rattle them from their bases of concrete.

He was a doctor and expected no such visions. He knew depressed people were sick and not crazy. Though House had often seemed crazy, now he was also sick. Sick enough that he had be brought to this place and left to their charge like a race horse gone lame.

Somewhere something crashed. Dishes or a television set pushed over onto its glass face.

Outside the office, people walked by the open door, the hall was busy with dozens of slippered feet and a rainbow of pajamas, blue, yellow, pink and green, paraded passed. Did they make House wear the humiliating colors of the mentally ill? What was he even doing here, anyway? House's psychiatrist said that, though House had said a few words, he had made no other real steps forward.

"Steps forward." Wilson whispered it aloud to himself. What did that even mean? After so many years with House as his best friend, he had begun to pry apart other people's words like House did, to try and discover their meaning beyond the politely smooth surface. "Step forward" could mean not just speak, but speak with self-purpose again. Or it could mean be more cooperative and try to speak, even if he didn't want to. Even if it doubled him over.

Step forward could be pretend words, not to be taken seriously; no real step to anywhere.

Maybe long steps in reverse even, to a fifteen years ago when House wasn't in pain every day. Or just a few when he was in the worst pain imaginable during the infarction. Or one short step to last spring where he had asked him to risk his himself and House had said an immediate yes. One day, one footprint before that was a time when House wasn't locked away trying to recover his mind from a twelve inch, metal spear pierced through to the center of his brai-

"Doctor Wilson?"

Wilson angled his torso to greet the diminutive woman who entered and reach out her hand for him to shake, which he did, rising for a brief moment. "Yes."

"Thank you for coming down today." She seated herself behind her scuffed desk, her old wooden chair, lacking any modern designs as to cushion or comfort, squeaked as she adjusted her backside to it.

"Of course."

Alissa simply looked at him for a few seconds. then she sighed and picked up a pencil, unconsciously nibbling on it's eraser end. "Gregory,...Doctor House,...my mentor Doctor Gooden thinks your friend would benefit from group therapy, if only he could get him to go to one."

Wilson laughed just a little. It was an sad, ironic huff.

"I take it that, like me, you don't agree."

Wilson folded his hands in his lap. "House doesn't play well with others."

She nodded, his words affirming her own suspicions. "He cried, a few days ago, in the yard."

"I remember."

"Yes, well, it's a healthy sign. Other than that..."

"He's been stone cold?"

"Stone. Yes, like that. That's why I believe this is a very serious depressive episode and not late-onset schizophrenia or the result of long-term drug use." She swiveled, regarding him. "There's one, unwavering truth I have noticed about depressed patients. They have no hope of change. Not in the world, I mean, but in themselves. To feel better again is a state they believe will elude them. A state they can't remember. It's like they're poised on the razor edge of going down forever, but they don't actually fall." She glanced out the window to the very normalcy of nature and clouds above moving trees. Living arms. "To feel like that all the time...it must be horrible."

Wilson thought it sounded terrifying. "Is that how House is feeling?"

"I think so. In my opinion, I think he's been so beaten up inside, by others or by his own decision; maybe from external things that have impacted him or from things he has done to himself - in his mind - he can't move anymore. He's too tired."

"And the there's the hallucinations."

Alissa nodded. "Yes. Then there is those. I think Doctor ?House has reached a state where his feelings are so confused, where he is in so much mental pain, that his mind invented these other people - or borrowed them - to try and sort it all out. It really isn't all that uncommon for a mind to split off like that in order to cope with things too traumatic."

Wilson wanted to shake his head and tell her she was wrong. House was too strong for this sort of thing. House never let anything bother him; he was untouchable. But then, House was here.

"But he seemed so okay. He seemed to be coping just fine - he's _always_ coped." Wilson leaned forward, though, his body disagreeing along with his spoken thoughts. "House is one of the strongest people I know. Why would this happen so suddenly? Why, during all those years of craz-recklessness, didn't he break down? Why now? What happened between last week and last month?"

"Clinical depression, and I believe that is what this is, doesn't happen because of one thing." Alissa leaned forward, trying to urge this younger man, obviously a man who cared about Gregory House, to think along different lines. "As strong as Doctor House may seem to have been, he really is just a person. He's a man with a drug and alcohol addiction. He's a disabled man of fifty living alone and in pain. Those things alone would not be enough to bring him here, but..." She bit her lip. "Doctor Wilson, no one gets this kind of sickness in a day. It's like a virus that starts with a single cell and infects and then spreads. One stressor on top of another. One life-impacting event piled on the previous one, until there's a subsidence of the human being. The will falls or the spirit crumbles, however you want to describe it. The fact is, Doctor House is here because he simply couldn't take any more."

She looked intently at him. It was disconcerting. "The bus accident. Greg received a rather serious skull fracture. How long did he rest up? What treatments-"

"-None." Wilson was ashamed to admit that no one insisted, in any forceful way, that House rest and recover. Amber's condition had crowded out all other thoughts once it became known to him that she was dying. At the time, Amber's life superseded everything in Wilson's mind. Even Cuddy allowed, requested actually, that House return to work to help them figure out a way to save her.

Alissa was astute enough to read where his mind was going. "I read about the DBES. Why in the world would Doctor House take such a risk to his own life for a "just in case" scenario? Surely he knew the possible, serious damage it could cause?"

Wilson could say the words. _Because of me. I wanted her to live. I never once gave a thought about what it could do to House. _"Do you think he has brain damage? Is that why he insists the hallucinations are so vivid? So real? Because his brain got re-wired? Because he can no longer tell the difference?"

"The reason I'm interested is, Doctor Gooden and I can't ignore another, secondary, possibility - PSTHI." Alissa said. Then elaborated. "Psychosis Secondary To Head Injury. Specifically, latent psychoses."

Wilson felt horror rush through him. She was talking brain damage. "I haven't really read much about it."

"That's because, although it isn't rare, it's a relatively new field of research and the patients who exhibit the psychotic symptoms are on the narrow side. Roughly four to ten percent might present symptoms as disturbing as Greg's."

Wilson thought it interesting that she often used House's first name. It would be equally interesting to know why. "You think House-"

"Doctor Gooden believes it is a strong possibility, but without a diagnosis and it is difficult to diagnose..."

"You said _latent_."

"Yes." Alissa swiveled in her chair, chewing on her pen. It was clearly a pet area of research for her as well. "The latency between the trauma and the appearance of symptoms can be a few days to many years. Usually, though, they appear within the first year of the original trauma."

"House had two head traumas. The accident - the fracture and contusion - and the DBES."

"I'd like to ask him why he would carry through such a risky procedure for something so elusive as a maybe memory." She sat forward. "But, yes. Because there is a delay of sometimes up to a year or even longer from head injury to the presentation of psychotic symptoms, the appearance of those symptoms is often puzzling to the physicians and frightening to family and friends."

_The bus accident and me. _Wilson felt shame wash over him, diluting the horror and guilt until he was toxic with all three. _House might have been okay if I hadn't asked him to drill a hole in his head. _Though House had first offered, it made no difference. House was injured; had gone over a day without sleep. Experienced memory loss, confusion, exhaustion, pain - he'd been a _wreck_. You don't ask a friend whose skull is cracked like the liberty bell to undergo a medical skewering. Wilson was certain Alissa could see that it was all his fault.

"We have a session this afternoon." Shane told him. "Gregory and myself. I'm hoping he'll talk to me some more."

Wilson realized he had no useful advice for her. If House didn't want to talk, he wouldn't and there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it. Wilson wanted hope, though, that he had not permanently fucked up his best friend. He did have one idea. "If you want House to talk, drop a subtle hint that _I'm_ not handling this well." Wilson suggested, knowing it was low down and dirty, but might be the only way to spur House onto paying attention to something worse off than himself.

He, worth it or not, was House's sole obsession in the world and Wilson understood that. House loved him more than he did himself. _I'm beginning to wonder why_. "Tell him I'm a mess. Just don't make it obvious, or he won't believe you."

"That's an odd request, Doctor Wilson. Why would that bring him out of his shell?"

"Because House needs somewhere to focus his mind; something to solve," Wilson mouth twisted into a thin, ironically sad smile, "and I'm his most enduring puzzle."

-

-

-

"Wilson dumped you here, you know." She said in her ruby-red suit with the stylishly flared pant-cuffs. Her perky breasts pointed at him from beneath the thinnest of white blouses. "He was glad to be rid of you. You are so tiring. And so predictable. Wilson's been back, what? - four months and already..." She looked around at the glorified prison-nut-house, "...here you are."

_I made the choice. _House stared across the floor of his shared sleeping space at the woman who was only present for him. Of course, she wasn't real. As he knew Kutner wasn't. Had they been the only manifestations of his ill or injured mind, he might have been able to live with it. Might have learned to dismiss them as irrelevant. Taught himself not to listen and most especially not to respond.

But when he hallucinated detoxing and then making love to Cuddy, complete with smells, sensations, after-glow and expensive lipstick...

Cuddy wasn't dead. She was real and in his face just like the illusion Cuddy had been. He'd had no idea,...no idea...which one was the one who'd actually touched him. Which Cuddy cared which way? Cuddy of the shedding clothing or Cuddy of the warm hands on his face, terrified at his sudden display of insanity?

"See?" The impossible Amber said. "She said there could never be a relationship between you and her. She sees you're pathetic, juvenile state. Why would a successful, modern woman like Cuddy look at you and think: Yeah - he'd make a good husband and father. You don't even make a decent friend or lover. You barely make a _person."_

She yawned. "I mean, give it up already."

House struggled not to agree but he was so tired of the argument. It had been underlined for him often; that he was impossible. Even when he had given in and said uncle, the criticism had not ceased. Amber was correct. The argument itself was moot. _I'm done - I get it! I'm what-ever-the hell you-say-I am-just-fucking-please-shut-up-now!_

"You're thinking out loud again." Amber giggled, thoroughly enjoying his embarrassment and discomfort.

Had he been? House looked down at his hands on his lap, wondering if they had gesticulated along with the words she said he had said. His fingers were still. Even his leg was numb today.

Somewhere a random thought occurred that it was time for his session with Doctor Shane. Gooden had assigned a largely inexperienced psychiatrist as his personal counselor/therapist. He sighed. One floor and five rooms down was her private office. It seemed a continent away. So far to walk while hanging onto the wall. His cane had been taken away soon after he had arrived. A cane could hurt someone. Better he be caneless and hurt himself.

He was pretty sure it was time. A porter would escort him. Bring on the benzodiazapine.

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	6. Chapter 6

**Going Inside-Out**

**Part VI**

By GeeLady

Rating: Mature. Bro-mance only. Maybe later there might be slash. So the rating might change to Adult only.

Summary: House is sent away for his own mind and his own good. Wilson must cope with the repercussions. SPOILERS FOR SEASON 5 and speculation of what might come after.

Disclaimer: House isn't mine. Though I wish he was. Slurp!

XXXXXXXXXXX

How are you's? came and went.

The woman in red spoke badly of him. Praised his visitor, Wilson, and reminded him how lucky he was to have him, or that he visited at all.

_"You don't deserve him, you know."_ She repeated herself to the uncountable.

House argued with his pretty tormentor by shaking his head to dispel her. As usual, she won.

Gooden insisted it was House himself tormented by his own subconscious; and his conscious act was to lock away any resolution behind bars of excuses and fears.

The fears he totally got.

Excuses? He had handed over his life, and been rejected.

_"That crazy trip was the most fun I've had since Amber died." _He needed fun and came home. Here I am, House smiled at her dead, sardonic face, laugh it up.

Why in the hell couldn't have she just stayed dead for real?

She eagerly assisted in his mental differentials by laying down each and every wrong he had ever done Wilson, or anyone.

Wilson looked back at him sadly.

House sighed and stared at his intertwined fingers, one to the other. Just his own fingers. For a long time. I wonder what Wilson's thinking?

_"He's thinking: "When can I get the hell out of here?"."_ She said, puffing on a cigarette.

Amber didn't smoke, that at least was some confirmation she could only be an invention. Unfortunately, also some confirmation that he was her creator, and so not sane anymore.

_"You never __**were,**__ House."_ She blew smoke at Wilson and Wilson did not flinch at the cloud. He did not see her or smell her invasion.

Wilson ought not to be here. I must reek of crazy.

"House?" Wilson's kind voice.

Gooden had directed House to the visitors room and a "surprise". His friend had come to see him.

"You're seeing Amber and . . ."

Wilson did look awfully worried.

". . .I can only help but wonder if it's because you feel guilty over her death."

Maybe by proximity. She did me a favor though it was really for you; she came to pick up your drunk best friend.

_"Gee, I don't hardly have to tell you how undeserving you are."_ She said from her Referee's corner. _"You're doing fine all by yourself."_

House shook his head, trying to work through her hateful noise to Wilson's fine words and restful presence.

My favor was only to almost die. Nothing changed. You hated me.

"I never hated you, House. I was just . . .a mess." Wilson assured.

I know. It hurt so much, it would have been impossible not to think that. The alternative was you really did hate me completely, and I think that would have done me in. I was a mess.

"If you're here because of me, because of the DBES, I'm so, _so_ sorry. I should never have asked you to do that."

I pretty sure I thought it up.

"Gooden thinks you might be suffering from Psychosis Secondary To Brain Injury. Hallucinations brought on by _physical _trauma. You know what that means, House?" Wilson looked hopeful.

_"There's plenty more to come?"_ Amber laughed at her own joke.

"That this is not a mental breakdown. You could get better with enough treatment, some rest..." Wilson leaned forward, his wide eyes urging belief all around. "You'll probably be fine."

I'm losing my callouses. I haven't picked up the guitar in a year. I don't know how to get back to that person. I'm so tired of her around all the time, making it so I can't talk to you without getting mocked. Her words and yours and mine all get stirred up together so nothing makes sense. Amber's always between you and me. She may as well still be alive.

_"Getting confused?"_ She asked and flicked her cigarette butt out the open window. For her, windows were always open. Locks, never shut. "_See how he stares at your sickness - __**frightened?"**_

House rubbed his face with a shaking hand. _Mental illness is not catching! _He shouted at her in eerie silence.

_"Fear of __**you**__, you idiot."_ She answered, self-assured in her ruby red shoes. _"Seeing the great Gregory House disappear from view - who would want to feel a sadness over that? Certainly not Wilson. He used all of his up over me."_

House felt his respirations increase because it had to be true. He pretended cancer once and stuck a knife in a light socket. Binged on most things and OD'ed. What had he really expected?

Wilson associated by choice. House shouted it at her._ He said so, BITCH!_

Amber snorted.

House remembered pushing and pushing Wilson back without any apologies along the way. The job held him together. His brain comforted him. He told himself it was enough.

Lately he'd said thank you to Wilson more than once. So scared to see him walk away again, because Wilson had moved on but he himself had not changed in ten years. Not ever, actually.

House had a terrible thought strike. It slammed down on whatever certitudes he still nurtured, like: Wilson loved me.

But what if it was pity? Had Wilson come back because Daddy House died and Mother House was sad and disappointed in her son because the son was _still _acting like an ass?

Wilson was great at pretending to love. He was the illusionist of love. House couldn't stomach the necessary lies. He'd heard too many of them. He was a citizen in a city where the residents never went to the museum or the fairground because they know it's artifice and the suspended joy always fizzles like a sparkler the minute you step off the grounds. Dad had said love and joy a lot. Fizzle, fizzle, fizzle. . .

You either loved someone or you didn't. There was no sometimes. House recognized the fake stuff like a map of the fairground. When it's done, the sparklers don't go wherever you go. They stay there at .49 cents each.

Wilson was staring at him, his eyes dark with worry, his face twisted with sympathy. House could feel it through the finger-closed lids of his eyes.

Was Wilson pretending for him? Was he that guilty or lonely too?

House didn't know. He was so tired, he couldn't even guess anymore. All of it, or none of it, was too much to ask.

House tried and failed to pick out some right words to convince Wilson to stay a while longer. Her words kept jumbling him up in his head. He was just as likely to tell Wilson to go to hell as beg him for help if he dared open his mouth.

Wilson seemed to sense his battle fought and lost, and shrank back down to old-time friend size, and not the friend on visiting day size, where shoulders were straighter and posture correct. Where words were censored so as not to upset. Wilson must have understood the difference too, because he got up without a single captured word to take back to Cuddy to prove what a nice talk they had. He touched House's shoulder; just laid his open hand down on his bunched up muscles. That was visitor friend with a nice sprinkle of old. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

Amber smiled._ "Don't tell me weren't expecting that?"_ She asked as the real person left the room. He had to open the door with his hand.

"_**As soon as he can**_ _means if he's too freaked out to come soon, he'll come later, when he's run out of things to put in between." _Amber sighed and stretched. _"I think he doesn't like that you see me. He's probably wondering if we're having sex."_

House watched Wilson leave for the other world. The unspoken things he had wanted to voice drifted after him but were too sluggish to make the exit.

Maybe I see her now as a punishment to you? Maybe I am that much of a bastard.

-

-

-

Alissa returned from her weekend and went straight away to find Greg House.

"Greg?"

He turned his head to her, his eyes leaving her face every so often to look at the wall. She wondered which of his tormentors was watching them. She had read that Greg's friend, Doctor Wilson, had visited him for an hour or so over the weekend. And Greg had said almost nothing to him.

Doctor Cuddy had been very forthcoming with some details as to the dynamic between them and some of the events that may have precipitated House's hallucinations and breakdown.

Alissa now had Doctor House's complete medical/psychological history in her hands and she could hardly believe the man was still alive. It was a train wreck of physical and psychological injuries.

**Doctor Gregory House. Male. Age: 50. Height: 6'2", Weight: 189 lbs. Family/Patient Profile, Psychological and Physical Summary.**

**Family/Patient Physical Mental Profile (Childhood):**

Abuse survivor. Only child of disciplinary military, emotionally distant, abusive father and doting, subservient, stay-at-home mother. Abuses both manipulative and emotional with some appalling physical and psychological tortures including forced ice-baths, regular banishments to the yard to sleep, extended periods of silence on the part of the father and on-going verbal abuse. Episodes of abuse began when patient was five and continued until age fourteen (emotional abuse, however, continued). As a child and youth, patient was highly intelligent (see note) but had difficulties with school authority, and establishing and maintaining friendships. Military life consisted of constant changes of residences to many countries. Patient learned to speak seven languages fluently, including Japanese, Spanish, German, Tagalog, French and Italian, and can understand several more.

_(NOTE: Intelligence quotient consistently scores in the top one percent of the population - 160 and above. Patient displays remarkable abilities in a multitude of disciplines: philosophy, music, science, psychology, and possesses an __extraordinary__ talent for the application of all of the above to his specialty (a relatively new field of medical endeavor). Patient's astonishing intuitive insight into all of the above disciplines probably puts his IQ much higher, but such numbers are difficult to accurately measure. Simply put, patient has been marked as a rare genius)._

**Patient Physical/Psychological History (Adulthood): **

At age 40 patient was crippled by aneurysm/infarction in right thigh. During that event, patient experienced a heart attack. Resultant physical disability from the debribment of thigh muscle was apparently a strong factor in the break-up of a five year personal relationship. Patient entered first serious depressive episode. Chronic pain from infarction and nerve damage was thereafter self-managed with narcotics. At age 46, patient was shot resulting in hypovolemic shock and coma in which patient experienced vivid dreams/hallucinations. A short remission of his injury-related pain was followed by a hard relapse that presently shows no signs of reversing. Several episodes of chemical detox have been attempted over the years since infarction. Patient relapsed each time. At age 47, patient endured a distressing court-case that threatened his career. In the midst of this, an involuntary and difficult third detox was endured, accompanied by self-mutilations. This was further compounded by continued alcoholism and a life threatening drug overdose which patient insists was _not_ a suicide attempt (common medical opinion emphatically disagrees). At age 48, patient attempted suicide for the second time by sticking a knife in a light socket. When colleague found patient, he was asystolic. Heart was re-started one minute later. Patient again insisted this was not an attempt at suicide, merely an "experiment". (Medical opinion again disagrees; instead patient's reckless risk of life suggests extreme lack of self-worth for reasons hypothesized but not yet confirmed). At age 49 patient endured a horrific vehicle accident in which he suffered a contusion/fracture to his skull and memory loss. Patient compounded this injury by a dangerous procedure called Deep Brain Electrical Stimulation which caused a tonic-clonic seizure. This caused the skull fracture to widen and a brain bleed. leaving patient in a second coma. Eight weeks ago, patient began to experience vivid visual hallucinations and attempted a self-treatment with an insulin over-dose. Thereafter hallucinations escalated into psychosis with delusions of complex hallucinatory events.

Patient checked himself into Trenton a day later.

**Present Physical Condition:**

Non-smoker for fifteen years. Not regularly sexually active. No STD's. Patient is emotionally distant but not schizoid. Clear signs of clinical depression post-leg injury -- never treated. Repeated episodes of undiagnosed depressive episodes, all untreated. In the past patient has used morphine injections to manage severe break-through leg pain. As an inpatient, his chronic pain is currently being managed with NSAID's and Codeine Tylenol. Aside from old leg injury, three heart attacks, seizures and many years of narcotic/alcohol dependence, over-all health is surprisingly good.

Alissa closed the file. She would have used the terms _miraculously good_. Small wonder Doctor House was now here. How could anyone come through all that without a stain?

XXXX

Part VII asap


	7. Chapter 7

**Going Inside-Out**

**Part VII**

By GeeLady

Rating: Mature. Bro-mance. Maybe slash later. If so, I'll give warning and change the rating. Maybe later there might be slash. So the rating might change to Adult only.

Summary: House is sent away for his own mind and his own good. Wilson must cope with the repercussions. SPOILERS FOR SEASON 5 and speculation of what might come after.

Disclaimer: House isn't mine. Though I wish he was. Slurp!

XXXXXXXXXXX

"What are you feeling?"

Alissa decided to strike at the heart of what she believed was an underlying cause to Doctor House's continued resistance to revealing anything deeper. Until they could conquer his emotionally repressed, mutism into which he had withdrawn, until that was wrestled, dragged into the open and sifted apart, she did not think they would be able to effectively address the physical cause of his hallucinations. They could treat him with anti-depressants, monitor him and send him on his way, but without exploring the modes of thinking that had contributed to his depression to begin with, she was certain he would end up back here, or worse. Brain injuries, parenchymal or chemical, were tricky things. They caused neural damage but manifested as mental disturbances or, as in House's case, psychosis. It was a hard egg to find, let alone crack.

House rubbed his forehead, an affectation that had become a tic whenever someone tried to probe deeper than a needle into skin. "Tired."

His most common answer. "What emotionally are you feeling?" Alissa made no attempt to sooth him into revealing deeper issues. House was no fool, he could spot reverse-psychology a hundred-mile long Freudian couch away.

Amber, who rarely left his side now, scooted closer on the love-seat, leaning in so she could hear his response. _"Come on, tell her you were once in love with me. Tell her you feel responsible for my death - which you are, by the way." _She sat up straight, anticipating the fun. _"Tell her you wanted to see me gone from Wilson's life 'cause you subconsciously wanted him in your bedroom." _She giggled. _"Tell her that - she'll LOVE that."_

House closed his eyes, trying to will the hated woman from the room. _Leave me alone!_

_"Sorry. Not gonna' happen. I'm inside __**you**__, you idiot. YOU have to get rid of me."_

House couldn't shift the vision or voice of her. Not even in a coma, where patients are not supposed to dream, had she been absent. He should have known that first time, on the magic bus. "I don't know how." House wasn't sure he'd spoken aloud.

"How to what?"

Evidently he had. Alissa frowned at his choppy, out-of-sequence responses.

_"Answer the question."_ Amber barked, silently moving to sit beside Alissa. She perched right on the thick arm of the chair where his therapist stared across the small space of carpet between them, unaware of the intruding spirit. House was terrified Amber might try and hurt her somehow.

Amber rolled her eyes. She'd heard him. She always heard him. _"I can't touch anything, stupid."_

Right. She did what I told her to do. That was it. That had to be all that it was. But Amber spoke out-of-turn and hurt him, said horrible things to him and made him feel less human because of her vitriolic wit.

_But Alissa insists it's my wit. I'm torturing myself. I'm causing this. I'm at fault. It's just all mentally fucked-up me._ House agreed but somehow knowing that didn't make Amber go away.

"Do you believe you're seeing Amber out of guilt?' Alissa asked.

That was Wilson's question. _I didn't do anything wrong. I just made a __**phone**__ call. She came on her own. I even bought her a drink. _

_"And made me pay for everything. You're a mooch, House. I know you fired me 'cause Wilson caught my eye instead of you."_

Some of it was true._ I was hard on you. Pushed you to excel because I knew you could._

_"And then Wilson started dating me and you felt crushed. I get it. He's cuter and nicer and pleasant to be around and great in bed." _Amber looked at the ceiling, collecting her predatory thoughts. _"And you take drugs, are a miserable drunk not to mention a cripple, and spent the last fifteen years not appreciating Wilson at all."_

"I did appreciate him!"

Alissa jumped at the sudden bellow, but she was careful to remain calm. House was less un-nerving back when he wasn't talking at all. "Are you speaking of your friend? Doctor Wilson?"

House glared at Amber. _He's my best friend._

_"And yet, here you are, snuggled in a crazy-bin with his dead girlfriend's ghost. Imagine how that makes him feel?"_

House stared silently at Amber. Finally he noticed Alissa still sitting there beside Amber, waiting for an answer. _"You look pretty nuts, House." _Amber crossed her legs, getting comfortable.

"Yeah." He managed after some effort. "I never meant to hurt him."

Alissa was troubled by her patient's answer. House hurt Wilson? It seemed to her to have been very heavily the other way around. "In what way do you think you hurt him?" This had to be significant.

House struggled to find a reason for the well of pain inside him. One mis-step and Wilson could be gone. One wrong-enough word, one rude dismissal and he would be alone again, this time for good. Amber had said it dozens of times. _If she is me, then I'm probably not kidding._

Wilson had grabbed Amber before he'd mustered up enough courage to ask her out. you weren't supposed to ask your employees on a date. You weren't supposed to covet your best friend's girl.

_"I know you liked me. You paged me when you stuck that knife in the light socket. Sure that wasn't just to get my attention?" _

He wanted to find out if there was something happy to look forward to. Somewhere if you were an addict or a drunk or a cripple, it didn't matter. Where Wilson would be happy being alone with him. Two feeling alone together is better than one. _I need you to make a ruling. _Cuddy's face had flashed her distaste for the whole thing.

Amber laughed. _"You think Wilson loves you? You had to get third party intervention to get him to spend time with you."_

_  
_Every memory, whether good or bad, Amber twisted to suit her own opinions. He had no one in his corner. Not even himself, if she and he were one and the same. Wilson had been right about him; he spread misery to everyone around him because he was incapable of feeling anything else. _But Wilson brought me here. He wants to help me. He wants me to get well._

_"He feels sorry for you. That's different than love." _Amber had a counter-point for every point of his own.

_Wilson loves me the most. That's why he left._

_"He left because he wasn't sure he wanted to be friends with you anymore." _Amber insisted._ "You did kill me after all. And he came back as a favor to Cuddy and your mom, and then stayed because he missed the fun. He was just lonely, House. He was lonely without me."_

House had felt empty without him. Now he was crazy and what would Wilson want to do with him like that?

_"Another good question."_ Amber mused aloud for only him. Alissa was deaf to her venom. _"__**We**__ don't even want you the way we are, do we?" _She laughed at her word play. _"We're just one more worry on a pile of worries that must reach to Mars by now." _Amber switched back to speaking in reference to him alone._ "Is that really what you want to give Wilson? Doesn't he deserve more?"_

_Yes. _House realized he had not answered Amber's question, forgetting that she could read his mind, since his was also hers. "Yes."

House was battling something, and Alissa knew it would only get worse before it got better. She'd seen it in other patients; the first skirmish would escalate to a wound-inflicting war before it came to an end, with the winning side the most damaged. The only difference was that this time, there would be triage for House, and bandages and medicine. Shelter and treatment in words and more words designed through years of experience to heal the lone soldier and help him again adjust to civilian life.

Alissa leaned forward. "Please tell me what you're thinking."

She was so kind. He could really get used to this place. "He deserves more than me."

Alissa was all at once shocked and solemnly gratified that House had finally admitted something of his own self-worthlessness. He didn't believe he was even worth the mourning of spirit when someone hurt him. Clinically he was depressed to a dangerous degree and suffering from a physical injury to his brain, causing elaborate and terrifying hallucinations.

But emotionally he was worried about his friend Wilson. Wilson seemed to be a focal point of everything that was wrong with this man. Alissa ventured a guess that House was obsessed with James Wilson. He loved him, certainly.

She found it difficult to imagine what sort of pain had occurred between these two that would prompt House to think that everything that happened to him was somehow his fault. She would start a seed and water it daily until she was convinced that he had reversed that belief. "I _greatly _disagree." She said distinctly. "_You_ deserve more."

There was no acceptance in his eyes of that statement and she had not expected it. As hard as the strikes landed to rend a person to pieces, it took almost as much hard-lining pain to put them back together. The most dangerous time for the patients well-being was not now, when the patient is too weak or too sick to self-injure, it was that tender new-growth time, when the healing was just getting started.

"_You_ do."

And I'm going to make sure you get it.

XXXXXXX


	8. Chapter 8

**Going Inside-Out**

**Part VIII**

By GeeLady

Rating: Mature. Bro-mance. Maybe slash later. If so, I'll give warning and change the rating. Maybe later there might be slash. So the rating might change to Adult only.

Summary: House is sent away for his own mind and his own good. Wilson must cope with the repercussions. SPOILERS FOR SEASON 5 and speculation of what might come after.

Disclaimer: House isn't mine. Though I wish he was. Slurp!

XXXXXXXXXXX

_"In depression, all that is happening in the present is the anticipation of pain in the future, and the present-qua-present no longer exists at all."_

**-**

**-**

**-**

"You want to talk about my child-hood?"

House had found his nearly complete voice this morning.

Alissa was both surprised and tip-toe careful not to show it. Give the depressed the impression that such a small thing sparks insight for you, an unwelcomed peep-hole into their fortified defenses, and they are liable to shut you out from then on. A smile of pride on your part from so infantile an accomplishment from them makes them mad as hell. It's like giving a dog a pat for carrying a bone. That's something a dog does without plan, thought or reason. It's like a booby prize for the kid who was too stupid to connect the dots.

Questions about how they feel are worse. Such questions are amateurish and stupid. May as well ask a glacier how it feels. May as well ask the cold, dead moon. The depressed almost never speak up about they feel and when they do, they almost always lie. Telling the truth of it is far too dangerous for them personally. Firstly, it brings back to their agony of mind facts they already know and have come to accept, however terrible; that, even on pills, they are not happy and know they will likely never be so again. The depressed put up a good show each and every day for family and friends. They understand with far more clarity than anyone who has never been afflicted, that though life goes on around for others under sunshine and many plans, theirs is stuck in the unmoving present of being blindsided by an unjustified injury they cannot dislodge or banish back to the unknown hell from whence it came.

Secondly, _How-do-you-feel_ questions are insulting. The asker has no idea that a depression-afflicted person feels little else but the _effort_ to feel once more. When pushed to feel more, the depressive finds only his failure to do so. The well meaning expect a depressed human to feel as human and as they are, to look to the power of their mind and grasp hope, but the despairing deadness of the clock walks ever behind the depressed human, inches from striking his heel. Advancement to wellness seems so ludicrous as to be a cruel joke. The depressed feel choked off from the smallest part of genuine joy. They often describe themselves as hollow, bereft of soul and stripped of any will for fighting to get them back.

The only thing the depressed individual really possesses the will for, is keeping up the perpetual obligation not to disappoint those who love them; nor themselves. It is often the only thing left to shoot for. The depressed need like no other sick person the help from those closest to them, and so feign a level of wellness to keep them around so they can actually, over time, perhaps get well. And that obligation to wellness calls out its exacting edicts daily. Society demands it. The depressed wear no bandages or casts of healing, so they are not looked upon as ill. They are often the only diseased people who must fight, not only a devastating affliction, but the prejudiced that comes along for the ride.

Thirdly, the depressed see only the now of life in the most fragmented space of time. The present is an eternal passage to more and more not-really-there-at-all present. Tomorrow is never reached for. The past was a waste of energy because every trial and lesson learned, every triumph and pat on the back, lead only to here; where they stand in shock at the horribleness their existence has come to. The depressive state of being is barely _being_ at all.

The depressed hardly ever contemplate the future because it's instability is too uncertain a thing to work for. It's not that they don't wish to be there, it's just they're not convinced they'll make it or, if they ever again find the will to try, they're not sure they'll actually want it. Can't make plans for things when your daily fight is just to make it to bed-time, and have the world leave you alone again. Sleep is the last peace, the only escape, left.

A glacier, the moon; inanimate things have no feelings. The depressed are not inanimate, they just _feel_ that way.

"I want to discuss whatever it is you think has happened, either then or recently, that brought you here."

"You think I'm insane?"

"That's a medically inaccurate word, doctor. Do I think you're mentally ill, emotionally disturbed or repressed? Do I think there may be some physical damage here that we cannot see on an MRI? My answer is _yes_. But with hard work, you can get well. That is why you came to us. We didn't send for you."

It was true enough. House scrunched up his eyes, her honesty bothered him but, she suspected, somehow not in a bad way. She was getting closer to his deeply, unspoken un-admitted agony of emotion, though, and that did bother him.

That first crack in the armor was always risky. "What happened to you? Why are you here?"

House was a doctor. He was ingenious. The ingenious are the crazy with a degree and a place to work.

"I don't. . .I can't . . .I know this is just an illness; chemical, brain damage, if that's what it is, then I'll either get better or not. Either way, it can be treated. I can find a treatment and I'll get out of here."

"You tried several treatments."

"That was before."

"What's changed?"

House hesitated. He had no concrete answer, so he ad-libbed, "I'll diagnose this."

"You couldn't before."

"I was too busy."

"Doing what?"

"My job."

"So, now that you're on "vacation", you'll have the time to figure out why you're hallucinating and why she's the one that's the hallucination."

House knew as well as she did how lame it sounded. Geography made no difference. House ignored reason for the time being. He wasn't ready to give anyone else reign over his psyche. "Yeah. Here, I'll have the time. Regular beach paradise."

"You know, don't you, that you are very ill? That probably the only thing that may have success, other than psychotherapy, is drug-therapy?"

House tried desperately to ignore Amber giggling behind the good doctor_. "Drug therapy?"_ She tittered. _"Yeah, there's a good idea. By all means, pump up the druggie with more pills."_

Trying to remember that Amber was his own mind screwing with him, "I need less drugs, not more."

"You need proper medication, properly administered in proper doses."

"Benzodiazapines make me sleepy."

"That side effect won't last."

_"You can't get rid of me, House."_ Amber said, her tongue a whipping snake's. She shivered. _"I'm part of you. God - think how __**I**__ must feel?"_

"Shut up!"

Alissa did not react. Doctor House's arbitrary outbursts came unexpectedly, but she did expect them now. "Is Amber arguing with you about this?" Alissa asked.

House, afraid to speak for sounding nuts - either to Alissa or Amber - nodded.

"Tell her I'm not going to stop trying to help you, and that she has no power here at all but her tongue. And that's really no power at all since it belongs to you."

House felt a little better about that. It was something he could agree with at least: Amber was not real. However, his mind was making her appear, so his mind was sick in a very real sense, or Amber would never have shown up in her death suit. "No power. Just stubborn as hell." He meant himself of course. How could he be so inherently stubborn that his mind was even more stubborn than he was?

"Will you try the therapy?"

House knew it was inevitable. They would never let him out of here if he didn't. Hell, they may never let him out anyway. And if they did, he would probably never work again.

"We could also send you for another CT. Make certain there's been no further bleed." Alissa suggested. She was certain Gooden would agree.

_"House."_ Amber purred. _"You don't need another MRI. Come on! You're nuts. Admit it. Bone-deep, genuine, fresh from the farm crackers. An MRI won't change a thing."_

House felt his world closing in and in, down and down to a pinpoint of IF. What if Amber was right? Or _he_ was? What if he was simply crazy? What if the drugs didn't work? What if the days, months and years go by and he's still here? He was about to lose everything he had left, and that wasn't much. Cuddy would come only to look with pity. Tsk, tsk. Remember how brilliant he was? Cameron would make her doe-eyed appearances and with her watery cheeks, kiss him on the forehead. No way to save the charity case crazy man. No need. He was already in a hospital.

Eventually, Wilson would find another wife and best friend and wouldn't visit much. Soon, not at all.

House imagined himself shuffling about the high ceilinged halls in issue slippers and white bathrobe, wasting hours until he was a crazy old man muttering aloud with only Amber for company.

House rubbed his face. Fear pressed down - a solid block of ice on his sternum. His leg twitched like a rattler. On medical leave, his license to practice medicine was slung on the back of this stranger. His future he saw only through a veil of uncertainty and sweat, and could detect no route to its right reinstitution. Not by walking the road alone. "Can you help me?"

Alissa wondered who he had spoken to, deciding after a second that, as he had been looking at her, she ought to answer. "Tell me what brought you here." She said. "But ignore what she says while you do."

House looked away.

Alissa snapped. "Look at me. Not her."

House quickly looked back, a little startled. "I know she's not real."

"Then why do you listen?"

"John Nash controlled his schizophrenia by sheer thought. By will."

The more direct answers would come in time. So a little conversation can't hurt. "Do you think that could work here?"

He shook his head. "I don't know." He sighed. "I know the things she says are me. I'm the one saying them."

"We all have subconscious thoughts we'd rather not speak - that are better left unspoken actually. No one's perfect, Doctor House."

"Most people don't have their best friend's dead girlfriend following them around either."

"My dad blamed _me_ for my mother's suicide." She told him, straight faced. It was unrefined fact. "Think I don't hear those words of his every day?"

"Does he come into your bedroom every morning? Follow you around in an expensive pant-suit? Can you smell his cologne?"

"Memory is a powerful thing. I hear you have an exceptional one."

"I control my memory. It doesn't control me." He snapped. Looked away. "Until now."

"Why do you think you're hallucinating?"

"Why do your shrinks always leave the brain-fixing up to the patients? You and Gooden'r eating half my savings while I treat myself."

"Just answer the question and stop evading."

House examined his fingers.

They were long, strong fingers. The tips worried with callouses, the nails bitten to the quick. "He blamed me for her death."

"Doctor Wilson." There was more. No one lost their marbles because of one thing, unless it was so big that every trouble besides shrank to a pebble in a shoe. "Tell me about your leg."

"Not everything's the _leg."_

"True. But don't be so quick to discount pain. Physical; mental - it all drips down over time, like water torture. If you think that your chronic pain hasn't eaten a hole in you somewhere, you're not as smart as I thought you were." She ventured. "I hear you beat it once. Chemically I mean."

"The ketamine, yeah."

"It failed."

"Old news."

"But relevant application. You were given a shiny new dime on life. Then it was taken away. Pain returned, as bad as ever. And from what I've read, it's gotten progressively worse over time. More bad days than good, isn't that right?"

By his wary expression it was clear she was getting closer to his vulnerabilities and he didn't like it. She suspected his pain had always been secreted away as a private hell he only occasionally lifted his eyes to. She well understood via other sufferers that chronic pain is often dismissed by friends and family as "can't be that bad.", and by the medical community in general. Doctors didn't like to admit there was something they didn't know how to treat and in that instance, denying the pain's very existence was the last option for saving professional face.

"What happened? Personally I mean. The pain returned and..."

He rubbed at his leg. Was it subconscious or was it hurting right now? By the tension around his eyes, he looked like it was real. "No one believed me."

"So the one thing you had come to intimately know for sure was real - your pain - others dismissed as though you were - what? - exaggerating? Making it up? Faking? Lying to get high?"

"Wilson 'scripted for me. He _believed_ me."

Only after House begged him, she betted. Interesting. Only Wilson's name spoken. So even if there were others who thought House was scamming for drugs, Wilson's opinion was the only one that mattered to House. "He didn't believe you, did he? After the ketamine failed."

"Not at first, but he came around."

_Came around_. Make him doubt his own pain was real. Make him mistrust his own senses and judgment. Make him ashamed of his agony. Make him hate his dependency on the pills, his need for them. Make him hate himself for that need. She'd seen this before. Lots of times. People want to mold others after themselves. People want to see themselves in others and be validated. They agree with me, they think like me, they're just like me in all the right ways, so I _must_ be okay.

Wilson didn't like the way House lived his life. She was dying to ask the younger man what he had to offer that was so much better? "Not very loving of him."

"Yeah? Well, I'm a jerk."

"Really? And he's - what - Ward Cleaver? Three divorces inside of ten years. That's not a great resume' for understanding and support."

"Wilson's just afraid to be alone."

"Big deal." No excuse. "Who isn't?"

"Aren't we getting a little off topic here?"

No, we're right on target. "Why do you think he didn't believe the pain had returned?"

"Because I don't need coddling."

"Genuine concern from one friend to another is coddling?" Wilson was not the shiny friend in white armor that he appeared to be. House was no saint either, but House _was_ the one in extreme distress; whose sanity and freedom was on the line. That didn't happen without influence and circumstance. If not for the actions of others. . .

House had been living with and battling this pain for over ten years. It had to be a mitigating factor in so many of the other things that had happened to this man, not the least of which were repeated episodes of untreated depression, suicidal tendencies, alcohol and drug abuse (of the non-Vicodin variety), being shot, the bus accident and its consequences that, Alissa was convinced, was only the latest catalyst for the unraveling of Gregory House's psyche'. No one walked through lava and did not get singed. Walk through it enough, it leaves scars. _Swim_ in it . . .

"Tell me about Detective Tritter."

XXXXXX

Part IX asap


	9. Chapter 9

**Going Inside-Out**

**Part IX**

By GeeLady

Rating: Mature. Bro-mance. Maybe slash later. If so, I'll give warning and change the rating. Maybe later there might be slash. So the rating might change to Adult only.

Summary: House is sent away for his own mind and his own good. Wilson must cope with the repercussions. SPOILERS FOR SEASON 5 and speculation of what might come after.

Disclaimer: House isn't mine. Though I wish he was. Slurp!

XXXXXXXXXXX

Lunch was a drag affair on Tuesday. Hot dogs (the special flat molded variety to prevent accidental or on purpose choking and for masturbating purposes by women and men alike. Once House learned that little tidbit, he began asking for the sawdust dry hamburger patty instead. Fries or nibblet corn were the other culinary choices.

House pushed his food around on his tray. He always took his meal to his room instead of the lunch hall. Less food throwing, less sudden sprays of projectile vomit to contend with.

His room mate was an man in his seventies whom his son had committed almost ten years ago. "Lunch, huh?" Was his usual question at the noon-hour.

House nodded. There was no verbal response that could possible produce a conversation of any intellectual satisfaction. He preferred to remain quiet and die of a seizure or a psychosis-induced suicide rather than boredom.

"I used to eat lunch at home." The old fellow, Clarence, had wispy gray hair all over his head, freckles over most of his body and small, friendly blue eyes. He used to be someone's dad. Someone's grandfather. Maybe somebody's best friend. Now he was a mental patient.

House sighed. The overwhelming pastime in a mental institution is boredom. If the violent inmates, the drugs or the food didn't get you, the stupefying dullness would.

"I used to eat with people who don't wear diapers and drool." House retorted with less sarcastic enthusiasm as usual, but still enough to get his point across, even to a nut. "And people who don't talk unceasingly about their wonderful son who hasn't visited in two years, and with people who've never had a meaningful conversation with a halluc-"

House remembered why _he_ was there. His mood soured considerably. "Shut up. I'm eating."

"He signed the papers. My own good." The old guy offered. An offering House firmly rejected by continuing to chew, turning his head away.

"He runs my little store now."

Probably a corner porn and accessories hole-in-the-wall.

"Expanding into four more states, he says." The old fellow offered.

House hated himself for his curiosity. "How many states is this _little_ store in now?"

Old fellow looked at the ceiling for a minute, counting the numbers floating around in his brain. "Thirteen, I think."

Kid probably had his father declared insane and had him committed. Fathers have done just as bad to sons. Reflexively, House felt his back. The four inch scar was still there after forty years. Sometimes dads did worse. At the moment, House resented his own insatiable appetite to know everything.

He asked another question, chalking it up to boredom, "Hey, why are you here anyway? What happened to you?"

"I woke up like this."

House rolled his eyes. Trust a crazy to answer in riddles. "Meaning what? Obtuse?"

"Like me with my insides gone."

"That must really be hell at dinner time." House muttered, then loud enough for the old fellow to hear. "By insides, I'm assuming you mean your personality, or will. That much is obvious."

"My interest in things, they tell me. I'm schizophrenic."

House paused in his lunch consumption. "How long have you been here?"

"Twelve years."

House frowned. "How old are you?" Sixty-five at least.

"Seventy-one in February."

Seventy-one and a half now. Too old for late on-set schizophrenia. Even late, late on-set wouldn't wait until the guy was sixty-five to lay it's crazy cards on the table.

"Your doctor was an idiot. You've probably got syphilis, or early stage Parkinson's-dementia, or even the counter-affects of a stroke. Schizophrenia doesn't show up when you're about to check out. Schizophrenia likes to screw with young, active, healthy brains, not dried up retired ones. 'Cause what would be the fun in that?"

Old guy stared with all the animation of a cardboard mask, and House got the distinct impression the fellow had just pulled the neat trick of leaving the room while still sitting there. He wasn't just nuts, he was a blank.

A bell rang. Lunch time was over.

-

-

Amber joined him on his walk from the military style lunch room to the pre-schooler style common area.

_"Still trying to be a doctor?"_

"Fuck off." He said aloud. Let people hear. The doctors already think he's nuts, and the crazies know he is but don't give a damn. One of their own talking to himself was just another social interaction. Completely acceptable.

_"I'm here as your conscience and as your judge. Your conscience is numb and your behavior is insane. Court adjourned."_

"I'm only numb 'cause in here I can't get any."

_"Here or anywhere. Even Cuddy only gave it up in your mind. There's been no one since Stacey. She got out while she was still ahead."_

"Fuck off!" House started to walk faster, as fast as he was able on the hard plastic hollow cane they had issued. Today was Outside day, a few hours to walk unmolested on the grounds. Even Amber usually left him alone outside. Sitting down heavily on one of the few unoccupied benches, House leaned his chin on his cane handle and closed his eyes and ears to her.

House sensed, though, that this day she had followed him. He turned his head left.

"Surprise." She said, smiling like the hard riding hell-bitch that she was, her lips drawn back like a dog's, revealing a row of sparkling white expensive caps.

House jumped up and started walking, his leg protesting the extra distance, the extra time spent thumping around the halls already, even the extra weight of her shadow. House spotted the ground gates and steered his gimping body toward them without plan or reason. He just needed to get away, anywhere, away from her. He needed a long vacation full of drink, women, gambling and lounging by a fire with his favorite shows. No phone, no Cuddy half naked in his bed of dreams, no simpering eyes of woe from Wilson.

House was tackled just as he reached the gate with the chains and lock. Two big guys, got him to the ground. Soon two more arrived and each grabbed an arm or leg, carrying his twisting anger back inside.

They removed his clothes and dignity with well trained indifference, fought him into a cotton gown and strapped him to a bed though, he was relieved to feel, not too tightly. But then began a bizarre sort of ritual for the insane. They wrapped long wet, warm sheets around him, around and around until he was trussed up like an insane Egyptian mummy. then they strapped these down until House could move nothing but his head.

He'd heard of wet wraps. They took the fight out of you. Held you captive - motionless until all the anger or nuttiness went away. Sweated you mind-sober until you said Uncle. The damn contraptions were effective in their purpose. Any one of them would have sent Genghis Kahn into a gurgling slumber.

After six hours or so, they let him up, returned the trappings of civilization in the form of clothing, and sent him back to his room with his ground privileges restricted to "-with escort.".

A few hours later, Doctor Gooden made an appearance to ask him why on earth he would possible want to leave such a wonderful institution like Trenton, with its high ceilings which, just for emphasis, echoed back your own crazy words to your ears, and its hard wired insanity that permeated every square foot of the building.

"Needed a drink."

Gooden removed his glasses and seated himself on the edge of the room's second bed. "Amber's bothering you?"

House laughed, a short rueful cough. "Yeah, she's "bothering" me. When are you people to going to do what I'm paying you for, and get rid of her?"

"She's you. And your hallucinations have gone far beyond her."

House knew that, but it was something to complain about.

"Has there been no change at all in the frequency of the hallucinations?"

House felt nauseous. He shook his head.

"I'm going to alter your medication. Let's see if we can't make a difference in the next week or so."

"Let's." House recalled something and stopped Gooden before he could make good his escape. "That old guy - money bags. Clarence, the one who's son committed him twelve years back. "

"Yes?" Gooden knew to which patient House referred. "He's been here for years. What about him."

"He's not schizophrenic."

Gooden, with raised eyebrows of instant doubt, "Oh?"

"Most likely diagnosis is a stroke. I think he had a TIA that was missed. Probably an aneurysm that bled and clotted, caused him to pass out and left him emotionally mute."

"Interesting. And why do you assume that?"

"It's not as assumption, it's a diagnosis. I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid. Unless you've got him on the world strongest opiate, he's not schizoid. Schizophrenics are animated, more so than us so-called normals. Clarence is as flat as nurse Danley's chest."

"Doctor House, you know very well your judgment at this time could be skewed. You're not well."

"I'm not imagining it. I don't need him for an hallucination, my dance card is already full. Get him a CT. You'll find a bleed near one of his amygdalae. His emotions have been absent for years."

"Mister Marteen was diagnosed years ago at New Jersey General Emergency and examined by one of the top practicing psychiatrists in the state. His son made certain to hire the best."

"Well, when you're on top, there's no where to go but down. The triage physician and psych' doc' were wrong."

Gooden nodded while disagreeing whole-heartedly. "I see. Well, thank you for your input."

"Oh, stop the patronizing bullshit. The man bled into his brain. One CT will show you I'm right, and now he's stuck in here instead of being treated in a proper facility."

"I'll contact the family, and if they wish to pursue it, fine."

"Don't be an idiot. There's only the son who wanted his dad's millions. Of course, he won't want to look into it."

Gooden sighed and replaced his glasses. "Get some rest, Doctor House."

House watched Doctor Gooden's doubting-Thomas retreating back. "Asshole."

House found his cane and went looking for the old man of his interest. "Does your son ever visit?"

"Sure. One Saturday every month." Answer delivered like clock-work. _Like_ a clock. _Tic-tic-tic-tic_ - no variation in tone, speed or volume.

"Next time he comes, I'd like to meet him."

"Okay." Old guy said. Tic-tic-tic.

XXXXXXX

Part X asap

Next chapters of Remember Zion and One Small Consequence I'm hoping will be complete by Sunday. It's been a crazy week (ahem).


	10. Chapter 10

**Going Inside-Out**

**Part X**

By GeeLady

Rating: Mature. Bro-mance. Maybe slash later. If so, I'll give warning and change the rating. Maybe later there might be slash. So the rating might change to Adult only.

Summary: House is sent away for his own mind and his own good. Wilson must cope with the repercussions. SPOILERS FOR SEASON 5 and speculation of what might come after.

Disclaimer: House isn't mine. Though I wish he was. Slurp!

_**I have no idea how the series will resolve the reasons why House had to commit himself, but this story has been my take on the possibilities. All speculations, insightful or obtuse, are mine. **_

XXXXXXXXXXX

__

The world would be less interesting without him.

-

-

"Hey!"

House turned his head listlessly to one of his three room mates. Gerald was yelling from the wrinkled mess of blankets his bed turned into each night and afternoon. Gerald never stopped moving. Though he was always planning on "settling down to sleep" and "finally relaxing", neither state ever came to pass.

When it seemed like his room mate was going to ignore him, "Hey!" Gerald grumbled again from the lumpy cotton piles. "Can't you see I'm trying to sleep!?"

House ignored him. Maybe he had been snoring, keeping Gerald up. After-lunch naps were about the only time _he_ ever got any decent shut-eye. The nights were far too long and silent here. He was too far away from his piano, his records and order-out sweet n' sour chicken.

With a string of fancy expletives, Gerald got up and wandered away into the halls to begin his circling, looking for ever new digs to take a nap.

House turned his back on the room and his loony roomies, and closed his eyes, trying to go back to sleep.

Amber was there in the dark, the red of her clothes the shade of old blood in the dimness of his sleep-deprived mind. Here, even in the floating stupor of anti-psychotics and sleep potions, Amber didn't leave him be. Her skin glowed white like the evil ice-goddess she was.

House suddenly decided to ask her, since no one else seemed to have any answers. "Why _you_?" Maybe she was in a giving mood.

_"How should I know?"_

House hadn't expected anything else, but he was still disappointed, tired of that answer. He was weary from not knowing why. "You're part of me. Some deeply disturbed fucked-up part I didn't know was there. And I'm a smart guy. The smarts should be a part of you, too. None of this makes sense."

Amber smiled, teeth silver and sharp in the shadows of his mind and muted colors of his drugged vision. _"You said it yourself - I'm part of you. All you have to figure out is which part." _Her dirty cigarette glowed orange. _"If you can't, then I guess we're both screwed."_

_Yeah. _

_-_

_-_

House woke up to the rattle of his gurney and the shaking movement of its wheels over uneven tiles. A dark elevator ride took him down, and stark florescent lighting greeted him at the basement level.

"Where are we going?" He asked.

The back of the dark-haired head turned to look down at him. Wilson said evenly, like it was the most natural thing in the world. "We're going to operate on your brain."

House stared at his friend. "What the hell for?" But his mind was sluggish and his words sloppy from drugs. He turned to appeal to the masked nurse, but her gray eyes said nothing aside from cool obedience; a woman just doing her duty.

"We're going to drill into your head and remove the piece that causing so much trouble." Wilson smiled serenely, even white teeth lying to him, all the while the table was wheeled closer to the brightly lit room at the end of a long hall. It seemed he was being wheeled down the maw of a Great White shark.

House could hear the sounds of an oxygen pump and the clink of steel instruments being laid out in efficient rows. Wilson looked utterly calm. "Things will be all right now, House." He assured him. "You won't remember a thing. We'll all be all right."

House wondered which part of his brain they were going to cut into. His visual auditory center? His frontal lobe - the seat of his memory? What were they trying to fix exactly? "This doesn't make any sense." He insisted.

He was lifted and hard steel slapped tight around his wrists and ankles. The clank of hard metal on metal set up discordant notes in the room. It looked like a morgue.

"Just relax, House." Wilson purred. "You're in good hands."

"Let go of my arms." He looked at the dirty, gray walls. "This isn't an operating room."

Wilson frowned and House felt immediately ungrateful. Damn if Wilson couldn't make him feel like a shit with just a pouty look. "Now don't set up a fuss, House. We'll have to sedate you if you don't cooperate. This is for your own good."

Wilson loved those words. Wilson was the man who made sure House knew exactly what he was doing wrong all the time, and then went to great lengths to explain precisely what he ought to do make everything right so his life would flow along as smoothly as butter on the road to Wilson-esque happiness. Everything James Wilson suggested was always for his own good. House couldn't get up in the morning and pee if not for Wilson's indispensable advice.

"Like hell it is!" House said. No way, he decided. Not_ this_ time. This wasn't Wilson-like at all. This was nuts. House pulled and fought against the restraints until the sharp nylon edges of the straps cut into the tender flesh of his bony wrists. "Get these fucking things off me!"

The sour-faced nurse in the starched uniform shared an impatient look with Wilson. "He's been like this all evening." she twittered to the handsome doctor.

"Don't worry, nurse." Wilson flashed her his perfect teeth, charming the panties right off her. "He'll be put right soon enough. We can't have him going around blaming people for his own problems."

House wanted to shout that he didn't blame Wilson, but the drug-filled syringe the nurse violently thrust into his puffy vein took his voice and then his breath away.

Wilson smiled sweetly down at him as his eyes closed and numb darkness took him in. "House, stop worrying so much. When you wake up, you'll be a brand new man." Wilson winked, flirting with his patient, pouring on the charisma. "You won't even recognize yourself."

-

-

"Tritter was years ago. He's not relevant to what's happening now." House held his fingers and thumb on either side of his temples.

"Another headache?" Alissa asked. "Bad dreams again?"

House nodded. "Nothing but." He shivered at the memory of Wilson gleefully holding his detached brain in one hand, laughing as he tossed it back and forth between himself and the nurse, playing a game of Catch Him if You Can. House limped helplessly back and forth across the room, trying to snatch his brain out of the air before it was too late, and he fell down dead.

Alissa was sorry about that, but the medications were crucial. She knew House understood that, which was why, despite the nightmares and headaches, he kept taking them. He might be sick, but he wasn't stupid. "I asked you about _Wilson_. We've already talked about Tritter."

"Oh." House shook his head. "Wilson's about as relevant in all this as Tritter is."

"Then what is? _Who_ is?"

"It's _what_ - not who!"

Doctor Alissa Shane watched her charge carefully. Gregory House was a highly intelligent but slightly paranoid individual. He gave away nothing without a fight, and he fought everything. It was one of the reasons he was in here. "There are no _whats_ in life without related _who's_. I don't seem to remember you saying you felt bad about the _bus_."

House didn't look at her. Instead he suddenly found himself back there, remembering that awful Tritter episode when he and Wilson's friendship was tested to the limit. Tritter had been on a campaign to ruin him. Wilson had done the good friend thing and tried to prevent it, or at least soften the blow, so House wouldn't lose his medical license. Instead of accepting the help, House had taken the stubborn bit in his teeth and ran with it to the end, for better or worse. Mostly it would have been worse.

House continued to avoid Alissa's eyes and tried to recall his own motivations at the time. Refusing to back down from a bully who was more of a bully than he was, had been his first mistake. Insisting he had done nothing wrong. A lie - his second mistake. He'd done nothing illegal - that was true, at least nothing that anyone had caught him doing. But later he'd had to admit to himself that he had done things _wrong_. Things that had eventually spun around, and bitten him hard in the ass.

But what he remembered most vividly of all, was a tall, sober-faced bully in a position of authority who was set on making him bend to his will. Bend over and give it up. All of it. Cuddy had stepped in with a lie and saved his wounded backside from certain jail.

House recalled swallowing all those pills and about a gallon of alcohol. To this day, he wasn't exactly sure why. He'd felt totally alone that night. Wilson's suggestion of Christmas dinner he'd passed on with a some sarcastic gesture or other. Third mistake. "I didn't want to go to jail."

But he hadn't. Alissa decided to take his words at face value for the moment. "Where was your friend in all of this? Where was James?"

House frowned. "Why are we always back to Wilson?" House pointed with his plastic "safety" cane out the barred window. "He's out there, patting bald-headed kids and drinking espresso's. _I'm_ the one in here. Tritter was a petty thug. That's over. Move on."

"Yes, you are in here. Because you were hallucinating so vividly, you thought it was real. You were seeing and carrying on conversations with dead people. Part of this, Gooden and I are convinced is physical brain damage brought on by the DBES-"

House was suddenly angry at the suggestion. "-It wasn't the DBES!"

"It played a part, Doctor House, you know it did. Why would you agree to such a dangerous procedure on a virtually baseless hope?"

"It wasn't baseless." Though he knew it had been. Even though he'd first suggested it, that was when he had no working theory to what was killing Amber. Once a diagnosis had been postulated, discussed among himself, his team and Cuddy, and accepted as reasonable, there was no need. The DBES he'd done for one reason alone - Wilson had asked him to.

"You risked your life. You almost died. I've read the medical You were in a coma for four days, and when you woke up, you didn't speak for three."

"We didn't know what was wrong with her before the DBES. After, we knew. It _worked_."

"You knew everything you needed in order to make a reasonable diagnosis _before_ the DBES."

"She might have died."

"She _did_ die."

Alissa thought she understood now why Doctor House took so many risks with his life. He didn't care enough about himself not to; not when it came to those he loved. Not when it came to himself. Certainly not when it James Wilson. "You felt guilty. You thought her death was your fault. You may not have said so, you still deny it, but we both know that's true."

House's fingers were curled around the end of his cane in a death grip, the flesh bloodless with the strain. "You know _fuck_!" He shouted at her, an explosive boom of three words that filled the room with his fury and died away almost instantly. House was shaking.

"What happened after Wilson went away?"

"Didn't he tell you?"

"He can't tell me what happened with you, he wasn't around. Besides I want to hear what you felt and took from those events."

"But I'm crazy."

"An imperfect definition and even if that's true, it wasn't always so. I want to know what you felt about it."

"Why is it important?"

"Because it happened to you."

"Nothing. I felt nothing."

An echoing hollow of a nothing. A great hard-walled cavern of it.

Alyssa thought: The shock of tearing away. The invisible bleed the sick and depressed hide from everyone. Grief comes with fanfare or deaf and mute, but it still comes.

House stared at his doctor - she was a port he floated just off from, a haven in seas that had become too rough and cold. He'd been treading water since that day. "I felt . . ." House could not articulate it. How do you define lack? ". . .snuffed."

Like a flame. Flicker, flicker - poof. A light had gone out in him. Alyssa wondered if Doctor Wilson had at any point since House's institutionalization, at all suspected how thoroughly he had finished the job that the accident, the death, the insane DBES, seizure and coma had begun. She speculated from that point on House had gone on pure intellect. Then the suicide of an employee, a blow that had landed without warning and no none but House himself knew the impact that had brought down on his already hacked-up psyche.

"You felt abandoned."

House considered it. It fit, he supposed, as well as anything else. He nodded, hoping to move on.

"And when he came back, was it different? The same? Had anything changed between you?"

"No. I don't know. Maybe. He wasn't mad at me anymore. We were back to normal I think."

Alissa was certain that, along with the anger, was self-torture and desperate denial. Gregory House didn't sacrifice himself for anyone, because if he had, the one to whom it was given would not have walked away without a word. Would not have blamed him for all his past troubles. Would not have treated his almost-death as a lame offering. James Wilson had thrown the gift of Gregory's life back in his face.

House continued to dismiss all of Wilson's unkindness as just "Jimmy was afraid", but his psyche; his Id; his already tinder-dry self-worth had been burned to the ground by it. "You did that for James Wilson and no one else, and he rewarded you by taking a walk. By breaking off the friendship, by underlining to you how little he thought of it. How little he thought of you."

"He didn't meant any of it. I know him, you don't."

Greg House had known Doctor Wilson longer than she did, had spent more hours with him, had seen him at his best and worst, but there were things about his friend Greg, though seeing, denied believing. Dismissed, forgiving them outright.

In that dominion, she thought she knew Wilson rather intimately. Wilson was a manipulative and sometimes short-sighted man. Despite those glaring flaws, Wilson also loved Gregory House. Of that she was convinced, but he did not love him more than he loved himself.

House, on the the other hand, did. As deeply as the agony of Wilson's actions had affected him, House still loved James Wilson more than his own life. There was no doubt. That's why House was denying it; actually protecting Wilson; keeping him and his heartless act, in an oddly endearing but emotionally unhealthy way, all to himself.

Now all she had to do was convince House that this man he loved so much had been wrong to ask of him what he had. Wrong and selfish, grief not-with-standing. "He used you, and then he left you." A terribly difficult thing to admit. "I think you don't want to hang your mental illness on anything or anyone," She continued, "particularly not on Doctor Wilson's actions, because you have nothing left to lose if you're right." Alissa watched him closely. "Except Wilson himself."

House stared at her from betrayed, insulted eyes. "Oh?"

He was trying to keep up the protest, trying to run from the facts. But his avenues of escape were rapidly closing off. Soon he would have nowhere to turn to but the truth he was so desperately avoiding. Love was a good thing, but focused in an unhealthy way it could also be a destructive force, tearing holes in the heart it touched.

Love did funny things to people. "I know you love him, and I really do believe he loves you. But he should have done more than not assign blame." She said quietly, trying to thwart the knee-jerk denial she knew might again erupt. "He should have thanked you and _meant_ it." By good, loving, meaningful action.

House didn't shout this time. He rubbed fingers across his eyes and sighed. A great, deep breath of stale, hospital air that did little to alleviate his exhaustion. "Why Amber, then?"

"Why do _you_ think you're seeing Amber?"

House chuckled - a humorless, exhausted staccato. "You psychiatrists area all the same. You rely too much on your patient for your answers."

"A physician has to rely on his patient's health and response to treatment. I don't see the difference. Answer the question."

Rubbing his forehead, "Psychologically - because I was with her when she died."

Alissa stared a little at that. According to official records, the medical examiner's report, the attendings, and doctor House himself, Amber Volakis died over a full day after the accident. Her patient knew that very well.

"You mean she died because you were in the accident together."

House paused and Alissa could see him adjusting his memory on that point. "Uh, yeah."

"You have stated that you don't blame yourself for her death."

"That's right."

"But you knew she was dead, didn't you? I mean, subconsciously, you knew right there on the bus that she was already beyond saving."

House shook his head. "No, I told you, I didn't even _remember_ she was there until later."

"Medically, I mean, from the standpoint of a physicians reason, your mind put it together immediately. From from the amantadine, from her injuries, from the blood loss and kidney damage you rightly guessed had occurred because of the blood loss, you _knew_ Amber Volakis was as good as dead before she was ever carried from that bus." Alissa thought they had together stumbled over another weighty, back-breaking stone on the scale of House's eventual breakdown.

"The idea terrified you. Wilson would hate you. " She suggested gently, keeping her tone even and logical to appeal to the reason she knew was being pummeled beneath a terrible, mis-placed guilt. "You were going to lose him."

Alissa sorted through it in her own mind, as she knew House would search for reasons where she must equally be wrong.

But she didn't think she was wrong. The possibility he was going to lose Wilson was why House stepped aside to Wilson's medical opinions instead of following his own more experienced ones. It was why House had allowed ill-advised treatments. It was why the DBES. It was the why for every error made over those two days. It was the why House had punished himself for over a year.

Alissa felt sorry for him. Gregory House had attached his whole perception of happiness to James Wilson. His worth was partly or mostly James Wilson, and his future, he believed, was very much tied up in his friend. Whether subconsciously or deliberate, House made all the wrong choices for Amber to appease his friend, who had stubbornly clung to the belief that she could be saved; that any action was worth the risk, if it meant it would save her.

But House had known different and had _known_ that truth since the accident.

"You didn't ask her to come to the bar. You didn't deliberately leave your cane behind, you didn't drive the truck that hit the bus or the bus that hit the SUV. You didn't drive a steel rod through her femoral artery. You did nothing but make a phone call."

_You've been punishing yourself for fifteen years because you hung up the phone. _

House shuddered at the memories. The sound inside the tumbling metal monster was the sound of the world ending. The screams of fear and pain, some of them his own. The dull crack of his skull against the unforgiving glass and the black-outs. Stumbling from the vehicle, the last to emerge, the emergency crew seemed to have forgotten about him. He remembered not really understanding what had happened. Even after his memory had been nudged open, all he recalled in later days was the feeling of impending death. The nightmares had lingered for months.

"You think Amber taunts me because-"

"You loved Wilson, but after Amber's death, he hated you."

She could see her patient struggle with the emotions tumbling around in his mind. He was getting very much closer to accepting that he was in here because of nothing more complicated than guilt, loneliness and a terrible self-loathing for things he had _not_ done. House was in a mental institute because he was suffering physical damage to his brain, and from things common to all emotional beings. Doctor Gregory House wasn't in fact a super-being in a magic suit against which all emotion bounced off. He wasn't the greatest doctor on earth who had failed miserably either. He was just human.

"Your subconscious would never have chosen Wilson as your antagonist - you _love _him." Very simple, really. "You said Amber hated you. The accident, her death, the DBES that should not have happened, all of it gave you reason to doubt yourself - even hate yourself. You can hide pain, refuse it place, stomp on it, deny it's there, but it shows its face eventually, either through physical disease, or mental breakdown.

"Doctor Wilson asked for your life - " The final stone. " - and then he threw it back in your face when it didn't give him what he wanted." The world saw House still standing straight and strong under that mountain, while in fact he was being ground to fragments.

Alissa realized that Wilson was hiding from things too, and had been for a long time. Two educated medical men, both in agony, in co-dependent orbit around each other's destructive forces. Sometimes all love really did was hurt.

House sagged in his chair, the Haldol and Thorazine had brought on a persistent lethargy. Alissa knew he had also been experiencing nausea, dizziness and wet-mouth, a tendency to drool House found disgusting. Most of the more unpleasant side effects decreased with regular use over time.

With an already sodden tissue, House dabbed at the persistent saliva edging his lips. "What about Cuddy?"

House was trying to see her point at least, going back over the events and sorting through the many layers of jumbled pain and bewildering emotions that had given rise to such hateful dialogues with a dead woman juxtaposed with a vivid fairy tale spent in bed with his boss.

"Cuddy was comfort. She was a friend you had once had a relationship with. Hallucination Cuddy was created by you; _you_ trying to hide from the fact that you were sick with guilt and loneliness. You were trying to turn the confusing, hateful, _misguided_ accusations of your own conscience against yourself into something good. Something you thought you wanted. Cuddy was..." Alissa found the simplest explanation "because you were afraid."

Alissa watched her patient work through her words. He stared out the window. "Say _some_ of what you think might be true, why would the hallucinations appear only after Wilson came back? If I was so screwed up, why didn't Amber show her face before?"

"Because Doctor Wilson isn't the pivotal support of your world. He was not the sole measure of your worth to yourself. Other things, other events were added to that lingering pain - Doctor Kutner's suicide for starters - another event you could do nothing to fix and for which you partly blamed yourself for not seeing in time to prevent. You're not here only because of James Wilson." _But he was a large part of it. He was the catalyst._

House was unable to formulate a defense; right and true facts to show her how wrong she was about all of it.

His last wall was down now, and without his defenses in place there were hard times coming. He would no longer be able to shield himself from the emotions and the pain that would accompany them.

"I think you blame yourself for the events surrounding Amber's death. Things which lead to your best friend walking away from you during one of the hardest times of your life. Without thanking you for risking your life for her; without even saying goodbye - and when he did, it was only to tell you what a burden you'd been to him; what a miserable man - what an awful friend you'd been."

Alissa had met Doctor Wilson twice now, and both times had been charmed by his quiet demeanor and obviously genuine concern over his friend. Wilson was polite, good looking, and slipped easily into conversation. In almost every way, he appeared to be a man who could pick up friends with hardly any effort, while combative, stubborn, eccentric House spurned the trappings of human relationships and, according to Wilson, had only experienced one loving, stable partnership during his entire adult life. Where Wilson acquired his friends and lovers with a wink, House fought lonely battles from fox-holes for his. Sadly and ironically, isolated, lonely House seemed to understand what bona fide love was far more clearly than his more popular friend.

"And what a nice pal he was to deign coming back despite your pathetic neediness." Alissa echoed the thoughts she surmised had gone through House's subconscious at the time. House wasn't a weak individual. No person who had gone through what he had during his life could be labeled a weakling. But no one was completely untouchable. Everyone has a breaking point. House's had been losing Wilson.

The whole dynamic between these two opposing personalities had become heavily entwined over time, and knotted with a great deal of pain. They were more a couple than just friends, and that was intriguing.

Had Wilson hated his life-long friend? Probably not. Hated Amber's death of course, hated House's failure certainly. One thing was absolute: from everything Doctor Cuddy had told her, even despite her own efforts to get her two employees to come to an agreement and start speaking like friends again instead of enemies, Wilson had _run for his life_ from House. Had escaped. Alissa thought more that he had escaped to protect something or preserve something. To save something? Save himself from more pain?

Maybe he simply had not wanted to lose House too? Alissa thought it a strong possibility. When faced with things each could not accept, Wilson ran away, and House went crazy. Wilson ran because he was afraid, not because he hated House, but because he loved him that much. She doubted the younger man would have hung around such a hard-willed, fiery personality as Greg House for seventeen years if House had little to offer in the way of companionship. Wilson played the escape game, too.

It explained why Wilson came back. Love was a two sided coin, and these men each had a side. Together, they were head _and_ tails.

Amber Volakis.

Alissa knew Amber had worked for House for a year. That meant she probably had a fairly good knowledge of House in the professional sense. But what about personally? No doubt Wilson had shared his own opinions of House to Amber, and over their weeks and months together, she might have gleaned more from Wilson's stories about her former boss. Yet hallucination Amber was unfailingly personal and vicious in her attacks. Was it Wilson's words (provided in fact by House), that she was speaking?

So in House's mind, Amber was who? A stand-in for Wilson? Whose opinions carried so much more weight. Hurt so much more when those opinions were unkind.

Alissa sighed. Even she had trouble sorting it all out. Human beings were complex creatures, to say the least, and her work had been cut out for her. Now all she wanted was for House to see that his friend Wilson, however much he loved him, however his many good qualities, was not a golden boy. Wilson was just as flawed as anyone, and certainly not _better_ than House. Once he accepted that, he would have no shining Wilson standard against which to measure himself. There was no standard, there was just flawed people.

She watched House as he silently sorted through all the things he had heard. His hands, still now, not fidgeting. His eyes moving back and forth over the faded carpet, searching the past, looking for the simple, blameless truths he had assumed were no part of him.

He also appeared a little embarrassed at being caught in the same arena as weak, imperfect humanity. House was at the same time ashamed and bewildered by his friend's reaction to his potentially fatal sacrifice, that in the end had been treated as routine. Nothing special. Deserved by the receiver, but a gesture by the gifter as ultimately inadequate and lame.

How deeply it must have stung to offer up his brain, his very life, everything that contained him, only to have such a sacrifice looked upon as useless. James Wilson, understandably grieved over the death of his girlfriend of four months, had inadvertently re-affirmed in Doctor House's subconscious that nothing he did out of love or friendship was good enough. That Gregory had turned out to be everything his cruel, exacting father had predicted, and nothing he had hoped for.

House wasn't just sick to death of that wearisome old familial battle, the accident, the heart attack, the coma, had all combined to leave him ill-equipped to fight this new one.

She wanted House to understand and accept that he himself deserved the same respect and compassion as anyone who had acted as a hero ought to receive. Instead House had been treated as disposable. In Wilson's eyes, he hadn't been allowed to be imperfect. How _dare_ he not save her? How dare he presume to suffer as she had? How dare he compare - how dare he _fail?_

"If that's true and I admit it, I'm supposed to be cured now, aren't I? So how do I stop the hallucinations?" He asked with some bitterness. "How do I get my life back?"

It wouldn't be easy, but she and Gooden had been discussing Doctor House's progress, and lack of progress, and were working together to facilitate just that eventuality. She wanted this man to have a life again outside these walls. He was too unique, too valuable a human being, to be stuck in Trenton, forever labeled as a mental patient - a failure - and nothing else. The world would be less interesting without him.

"We continue the medication and our discussions. Remember, much of this is a result of physical damage. You cannot stick a live electrode deep into a brain's center and not cause _change_. And, as you know, brain damage is permanent. The hallucinations may never disappear completely. But through medication, we can reduce their power, make them a back-ground noise instead of a guiding voice. You're strong minded, Doctor House. I'm convinced you'll be at nearly a hundred percent when you leave here."

House looked sharply at her. "_When_?" He asked, a little doubtful still. "Not _if_?"

"_When_." Sooner than later when.

-

-

By the time House was returned to his room, he had erupted into a screaming, angry animal, cursing her, the place, and the whole state of the world.

Alissa nodded patiently at the orderlies report of House's out-burst. She had been prepared for it. That often happened. A patient faced with the stark reality of his or her own illness found it too much to take in all at once. The anger, the fighting was a last ditch attempt to demonstrate that not only were the doctors wrong about the craziness, the patient still possessed self-will and had the right and power of autonomy - to fight against them, if for no other end. They had the right to be angry about their own sickness.

Alissa put in a call to Princeton. It was time Doctor Wilson paid his friend a visit. She believed that this time, Doctor House would talk to him. Maybe honestly for the first time since the accident. Maybe for the first time ever.

-

-

House saw the younger man approach his on-again off-again companion, Clarence. It had to be the son he so fondly spoke of.

House had borrowed a white coat from an otherwise occupied intern who'd shed it because of the heat, and waited nearby until the two men finished exchanging the father/son surface-layer pleasantries. Then he walked casually over to insert himself into their conversation. He walked straight up to Clarence, and sat down next to him. "How are you today, Clarence?"

Not bothering to extend his hand in greeting, or even introduce himself to the son, House nodded as Clarence answered with his usual monotone of nothing special.

His son, a short, slightly tubby man in his fifties with thinning black hair, wearing an expensive silk suit and hand-made leather shoes with a fresh polish, stared at House with the look of an individual who does not want to be impolite at the disruption of the impolite stranger, even if that stranger was dressed like a doctor.

"Are you my father's doctor?"

House stuck his hand out now, nodding. "House." House studied the son of Clarence. "Yes, I'm his doctor." House glanced sideways to Clarence. "Isn't that right, Clarence?"

Clarence nodded. "That's right. House is a doctor."

The son appeared a little puzzled. "I don't understand. What happened to Doctor Hodgsen?"

"Family emergency. He'll be gone for a few weeks." Absolute bullshit. House hoped like hell Hodgsen didn't walk by any time in the next few minutes. "The good news is, Doctor Hodgsen has consulted with me and we've gone over your father's original psychiatrist's notes..." House had checked, the psychiatrist was dead now. Lucky break for Clarence. "...and we feel there was a misdiagnoses back when your father was first assessed."

The son suddenly looked a little nervous. "Misdiagnoses? What kind of misdiagnoses?"

"The kind where the original diagnosis was amiss. Your father does not have schizophrenia. He originally suffered a TIA, a small stroke that was missed in his amagdalae, it caused a numbing of emotions and left him in a state of what we call "submerged consciousness."

The son was sweating.

"The next good news is, he's healthy enough to make many of his own decisions and with drug therapy and a little assistance, can probably go back to running his company. At the very least, he'll be able to go home."

"I see."

Before sonny-boy had a chance to make up a really clever excuse as to why his dad should not be released, House added, "And I've submitted my written recommendation to Trenton and your father's attorney's to that effect." He hadn't, but once he was sprung he sure as hell would figure out a way to do just that.

Sonny sputtered. "You can't do that."

House regarded him with serene curiosity. "Why would you _not_ want your father out of here?" House chuckled as though to a fool, "I mean, other than the millions and millions of dollars pulled out from under dear ol' dad by your greedy little fingers and his multi-million dollar company under your direct control, give me one good

reason why you _wouldn't_ want him released?"

Sonny stared daggers. "You son-of-a-bitch."

House turned to Clarence. "How about you, Clarence, would you like to go home? See a movie? Putter around in that garden of yours? Meet a nice lady at the bingo palace?" Clarence probably wouldn't be able to dip his hand into the running of his company again, but at least he could live his final years in style and comfort.

Clarence slowly cracked a smile as his mind lit up with the possibilities. "Yeah. I sure would." Clarence stood up. "Let me go pack my things. I'm gonna' go _home_."

House turned back to the greedy son. "Tell you what. I'll keep your little fib about conspiracy to commit your father, I'll even forget about who's name is on the company stationery. But you are going to make haste with getting Clarence home just as soon as your fat ass lifts off that chair. You are going to hire him a maid, a cook, a nurse and, if the ladies at the bingo hall aren't willing, a hooker now and then. You're going to give him the best damn retirement a millionaire's son's father ever had. Or Clarence's lawyers and I are going to have a long talk on the phone."

Sonny-boy's rage was swallowed up in his fear of losing everything. "Fine." He sucked in a calming breath. "Fine, you fucker."

House stood, saying as he walked away. "I'll be checking in on Clarence. Count on it."

-

-

"How is House?"

For the second time, James Wilson was seated opposite Alissa in her modest office. In the presence of his expensive suit and pricey hair-cut, her shabby office and simple, Walmart attire felt a little below his class. She shook off the feeling. "Doctor House is sick with guilt over Amber Volakis' death, and grieving over you."

James Wilson stared at her. "But that wasn't his fault. I told him it wasn't. He knows it wasn't. I don't think I understand - grieving-?"

"Let me be frank, Doctor Wilson. Gregory House believes that you don't really believe that it wasn't his fault. He's here partly because when he sees you look at him, he believes you don't see just him, but the man who killed your girlfriend. He thinks you still blame him for it. And he's here because you asked him to stick an electrode into his brain, which caused a seizure, a coma and short-term aphasia. And now, most recently hallucinatory-delusions that could end his career."

"That's not really correct." Wilson rubbed his forehead. "Look, we-."

"-You walked away after the DBES, a request you placed upon an already sick man who was not capable of caring for himself, never mind in a state to effect some last minute miracle to prevent a patient's death. That ill-conceived procedure was border-line malpractice against a man who was, at the time, a _patient_ - I have the medical records. I have his chart dated two days prior to the DBES, the day of the accident, the day he was admitted. Doctor House was never actually discharged until after he awoke from his coma and was declared fit enough to go home. I can't believe that you don't see how unbelievably negligent that was. I can't believe that Doctor Cuddy, _the Dean_, doesn't see it, or that she signed off on that procedure, or that she allowed Doctor House to run around the hospital with a _skull fracture_ and a _brain bleed_.

"I don't care that the patient was your girlfriend, or who among you thought you couldn't do without his skills. Through-out this appalling medical misconduct, House's health was disregarded and proper medical treatment dismissed. The dereliction of Hippocratic duty perpetrated by Doctor Cuddy is, in my opinion, cause for dismissal. In fact, you both should have lost your licenses."

She watched Wilson take in her words. Wondered if he or his boss had ever considered their own actions in depth, or honestly. "Instead, House just kept on risking his own health and you two just kept on shrugging your shoulders, allowing him to do it."

Wilson looked at the top of her desk and the higgledy-piggledy array of pencils, papers and personal knick-knacks. He was reminded of House's desk. "It was his choice. He suggested the DBES to begin with."

"Come on!" Alissa tossed her findings at him. Wilson caught the thick file on its way to the floor. "He was _sick!_ His medical condition was terrible and you both knew it. Emotionally, he wasn't much better. He didn't want to lose his best friend - meaning you. So you know as well as I that he would have laid down in _traffic_ for you."

Wilson knew he had used House's guilt over Amber to goad him into the DBES. Though a reasonable diagnosis had been reached, House had agreed with a mere seconds hesitation. Wilson recalled almost smelling the guilt wafting off House that day. He was terrified that Wilson was going to hate him.

All Wilson could think about was Amber. _All House could think of was me_. "I was out of my mind. Amber was _dying_."

Yes, the grief may have been a mitigating influence. "I want you to know that I believe Doctor House is going to get well. With proper medication and continuing therapy he could probably return to practicing medicine - with a significantly lightened work-load. But I can't guess how well he will cope once he does return. He's torturing himself through hallucinations of Amber Volakis, and then trying to comfort himself via hallucinations of living drug-free and in a relationship with his boss. Gregory's been in agony for months. I'm surprised you didn't see it."

-

-

Wilson dialed Lisa Cuddy's office from Trenton's wide echoing hall. Patient's walked back and forth at the far end, behind wire mesh too thick to cut or bend. For their safety. And his. Cuddy picked up almost immediately, giving him no time to think of the reason he was calling her in the first place. And now he couldn't think of one, but it was too late to hang up.

_"Doctor Cuddy." _A simple greeting from a busy woman.

"It's me."

_"How's House?"_

"I guess, better."

_"Guess? Better how?"_

"Talking. Shane's said he's angry and throwing things and . . .I guess mad as hell at me."

_"Oh?"_ Despite the question, Cuddy sounded like she believed it.

Wilson remembered the seizure. House cut his hand open on the medical tray, thrashing all over, getting blood everywhere, and then he stopped, flopping down like a side of beef on a butcher's block. All Wilson could see, through the haze of House's still form and Chase's shouts for him to help, was Amber's bloodless face, now as good as dead.

"He still thinks I blame him for Amber."

_"Don't you?"_

"What?"

Wilson heard Cuddy suck in a breath_. "You still love him."_ She said. It was not a question. "_Even though he failed to die for you?" _Now, questions. Long held-in sharp, hurtful questions she, out of respect for his mourning, had kept to herself until now. "_Failed to trade his life for hers?"_

"What the hell kind of question is that!? Of _course_ I still love him."

_"Could have fooled me."_

"What does that mean?" He was beginning to regret dialing.

_"House risked his life, __lapsed__ into a coma. You,...you didn't visit him even once. You walked away. You didn't thank him. You didn't call. You let him lay there, believing that he should have saved her or at least been good enough to die in lieu. As I said, you could have fooled me."_

"I was grieving!" But that excuse had long since lost its potency. Too sick with grief to make one phone call to see if House was okay just didn't wash.

_"You knew House didn't wake up for four days. What you didn't know was he didn't speak for three. And when he finally remembered how, he asked where you were. You bastard - you made me lie to him for you. I lied and said you had checked on him when I __**knew**__ you hadn't. I lied because I was terrified he'd forget how to speak again and be mute for the rest of his life if he didn't have anything to hope for; if he didn't have at least you. So. You. Could. Have. Fooled. Me!" _

When Cuddy hung up, the feeling that the cracked, pit-holed section of road on which he had been traveling ended, and another began. This one had to go better. _Had to_. He would make sure.

-

-

"House."

House opened his eyes. They were crusted with gook and red from sleeplessness. He'd been strapped down and sedated after his umpteenth tantrum of the day, states of emotion Shane and Gooden insisted were a healthy sign. House had emerged from the world of the half-living into the world of the wanting-to-live-again. Anger was simply part of that. House was thoroughly pissed off at the place where life had finally thrown up its hands and dumped him.

House moved rheumy eyes around until they found Wilson's face. "Hey." House made an effort to look around the room, just having energy enough to lift his head off the pillow. "What? No porn? No hooker?" House's words were slow and slurred from the calming sedative. "What...kind of cheap hospital visit iz-'iss?"

Wilson smiled. It was a sad gesture full of regrets. Nothing changes but the future and only if you work hard. "Sorry. Hospital rules. If you're desperate, _I'll_ kiss you."

House rolled his eyes, a sluggish half effort that almost didn't register as irritation. He was so sedated, he was drunk with it. "Were you 'ere for m' latest mel'-down?"

Wilson nodded. He hadn't seen it, but had been told. He'd been told a lot of things today. "I don't blame you for Amber, House."

House stared at him, suddenly wary-eyed and puzzled by the abrupt turn the conversation had taken. " 'know."

No, he didn't, Shane insisted. He really didn't. "I'm sorry I walked away. I guess I wanted to punish you." Punish him for not dying. Had that really been his underlying feeling? "I - god - I'm so sorry."

"You s-said you didn' blame me, but I know you din' forgive me." House had to rest for a few seconds after so many tiring words. "Still don't."

"I forgave you." Wilson said, not certain how much House would remember of their conversation. "I did. I _do_."

House shook his head once back and forth, and kept talking like he hadn't really heard. "Then yu' left. Tol' me I wz a mis'rable bastard you needed t'get 'way-frum." House frowned at the memory. Maybe one he didn't let himself think about too much. One he didn't like the feel of on his chest. "That r'lly hurt, y'know."

Wilson nodded. He had no excuse but grief. Not enough. Not for this.

Impulsively Wilson cupped House's left cheek in his hand and used his thumb as a balm, stroking House above his thin eyebrow, needing the physical connection with his friend in order to sooth him. And maybe to sooth himself as well.

House's eyes looked elsewhere. "'N he hasn't bin spend'g time with me." House spoke aloud but to himself. "'Guezz he dozn' wan' get that close 'gin."

Then House focused his eyes back on Wilson with a tiny start, as though Wilson had blinked out and then reappeared. "Shane says Amber'z here 'cuz I think you hate me, and I'm making her all up t' p'nish m'self. But I think Amber'z here 'cuz I kill'd her." House's eyelids began to leak water, only he didn't notice. He didn't try to lift a strapped down hand to wipe them away, or look embarrassed. It was like they weren't there at all.

He whispered so softly, it barely registered as speech. "Din' mean to. . ."

Suddenly Wilson was crying just as silently, as his friends misery stared him squarely in the face; letting him see beyond any doubt the damage, the pain, he had caused House not only physically, but mentally. Emotionally repressed House would deny it even as he punished himself. And he had been punishing himself for Amber, and over Wilson, for a long time. "It wasn't your fault, House. It was mine. I made you cool her down; move her. I made you do that fucking DBES procedure - _Jesus_."

Wilson wiped his own tears way with a thumb and finger, wishing, wishing, _wishing_ he could turn back the clock and do things differently so that, though Amber might still be gone, House would be still whole. "Everything that's happening to you now, is because of me."

House rolled his eyes again at what he saw as Wilson's tendency to carry the world on his shoulders, but they were blinking closed, then open, then closed. He was was losing his battle against the tranquilizer. He'd be out in seconds now. "Yer not the pivot th' world turnz on, J'mmy." House teased. "Give't up."

Wilson didn't know how to repair the damage he'd caused. Maybe there was no repairing. Only forgiving, and moving on. "I'm sorry I went away." An apology would never be enough, but nothing really would be. There was only what he believed now. It was all he had to offer. "House. It wasn't your fault. Okay? Please believe that. For me? Believe it for me."

House was almost asleep.

"Because I still love your shine of neediness, and every other screwy part, too."

When he hunched over to give House a small hug, just his upper body pressed against House's for a second or two, all the bed rail would physically accommodate, his friend was already asleep. "I loved you the most." _I took you for granted. _"I was a coward." _I'll never make that mistake again._ "Just come home."

-

-

Doctor Alissa Shane passed to each of her visitors a copy of the forms containing her and Doctor Gooden's report and the final results of House's treatment, along with his discharge papers.

"You're sending him home?" Cuddy asked.

The gentle hope on the younger woman's face was encouraging. Alissa nodded. "He's responding to the medications, and has not had a hallucinatory incident for nine weeks. He's coping with the medication's side effects and we're confident that physically he'll adapt to the new regime of less damaging analgesics."

"So that's it?" Doctor Wilson asked. He, too, looked hopeful. Relieved. Shane hoped they had a good, long talk. House seemed much improved. Maybe they had.

Alissa sat back. "Not quite." She and Gooden had discussed what she was about to say at length and he had finally agreed to it in principle, though refused any commitment to act upon it.

"I have drafted a letter for the New Jersey Medical Liaison. Now, understand, that this letter is not being sent to anyone. It is simply my professional opinion and that of Doctor Gooden regarding the conduct of Princeton's Dean of Medicine and her Oncology Department Head during the months prior to Doctor House's admittance to Trenton for treatment."

Doctors Cuddy and Wilson now looked puzzled. "A letter to the Board, about us?" Cuddy asked. "Why-?"

"Let me finish. I have no doubt that at heart you, Doctor Cuddy, as Dean, have the best interests of your staff at heart. But having their best interests, and pursuing actions that in fact _support_ their best interests can be two different things."

Alissa cleared her throat. She had become very protective over Doctor House and wanted to ensure he was returning to a job with people who would properly act to properly support him during the later stages of his recovery. "I have also drafted a letter to the board members of PPTH stating that it is our opinion that Doctor House is fit to return to duty on a limited basis. And by limited, I mean time restricted, not limited in scope of practice."

Cuddy held off on her questions over the first letter, which contents remained unrevealed. "I'm glad to hear it."

"You may not be so glad after you have heard all of our recommendations. Doctor House is to return, not as head of Diagnostics, but as a co-head alongside doctor Eric Foreman, and in the capacity of a on-staff diagnostic consultant."

Cuddy's mouth dropped open. "A consultant? But that will mean, that will _double_ his salary. The hospital can't possibly afford-"

"Would you rather have a second party law suit to the tune of millions? Doctor House, or Gooden and I as his attendings, are all within rights to launch legal action."

Wilson asked. "What are talking about? What legal action?"

"Directly after the bus accident, Doctor House was admitted to Princeton Plainsboro Hospital."

"Yes." Cuddy answered, her tone an impatient question.

"He wasn't discharged from the system until after Amber Volakis' death."

Slowly it began to dawn on Cuddy why Alissa was telling them this.

"Doctor House was a patient under your care, and yet instead of being made to rest and recover, he was allowed to run around with a skull fracture and brain bleed, trying to help _you_, Doctor Wilson, get your girlfriend back. Miss Volakis' death was a tragedy, and I respect that you were grieving at the time, but to act upon the suggestion of a deep brain electrical stimulation on a _patient_ with a broken skull and bleeding into his brain, was nothing less than malpractice."

Alissa pushed her point. "I don't care how many letters House has after his name, once he was admitted, he was a patient under your care. He was in no position to be practicing medicine for himself, for the hospital, or for either of _you_."

Cuddy was silent as the realization settled in where it ought to have already been.

"House was seriously _injured_, he was sick. He was your _patient_. And he was in no state to be undergoing such a dangerous, risky procedure as a DBES while in _that_ weakened state under _your_ care. He wasn't tended to like a patient at all, his injuries were disregarded by you, Doctor Wilson, and by you, Doctor Cuddy."

Alissa didn't take her eyes off the pretty physician with the painted nails and designer skirt. "As Dean of Medicine, you at least should have put a stop to it."

Alissa sat back, the air out of some of her fury over the deplorable actions of House's colleagues dissipated. "It is our opinion that the DBES that you had Doctor House undergo while ill caused brain damage which, in part, caused the hallucinatory psychotic episodes he has been experiencing. And before you mention it, let me tell you that I don't care that House was the first to suggest the DBES, I don't care that he's a stubborn man or hard to handle - at the time he was a _patient_ in your hospital. He was _sick_! You both ought to lose your licenses to practice medicine."

Alissa sat forward again. "Having said that, that last is merely my opinion. This first letter that I have drafted states the events as described by you and Doctor Wilson and the facts of police and medical reports thereafter, that directly resulted in the health of Doctor House being sorely compromised due to him, as a patient, being placed in a position of extreme risk. It also states the negligence and liability, particularly on your shoulders, Doctor Cuddy, and in turn the hospital's. If any one of my conditions for House's return to work are not implemented, or not followed to Doctor Gooden's and my specifications, I will send this letter to the New Jersey Board and the American Medical Association recommending an immediate inquiry into the the whole messy thing, and into the conduct of all attendings involved."

Alissa stared at Cuddy, knowing the woman was intelligent enough to recognize her words as blackmail. But also knowing Cuddy was wary enough not to doubt the anger in Shane's voice that said she would make good on her threat if Cuddy tried to do an end run-around.

"Doctor House is paying a heavy price for a serious deviation from proper care. I'd like to think that _you_ think he's worth a few perks for me never to mention that again."

Alissa read the conditions. "Doctor House is to work no more than six hours on any given day. He is to have an assistant - a secretary - hour-long paid lunch breaks, and two twenty minute paid coffee breaks every shift. He is to work no more than five consecutive days with two days off. Or six consecutive days with three days off. His psych' med's are to be prescribed and monitored by your staff psychiatrist and no one else. His pain med's will continue to be administered by Doctor Wilson, if he is willing, providing no Vicodin or other non-approved narcotic ever been prescribed.

"Doctor Gooden or myself will make unannounced monthly visits to check in on him ourselves to ensure his medical needs are being met."

Cuddy interrupted. "you can't just barge in whenever you like, making inspections-"

"-Oh? You would rather I remove doctor House from your staff and place him elsewhere, where his medical needs will be met? Let me tell you right now, one more breakdown the likes of which House has just suffered, and there'll be no recovery. You'll lose him. I urge you to keep that in mind the next time you choose to disregard his safety whenever he suggests another risky procedure to save either of your asses or the asses of people you love.

"Now, having said _that_, a blind man can see that there's a history here between you three that goes beyond professional. There are obviously relationships involved and I'm trying to preserve them, Doctor Cuddy, because I can see that they're important to House. Are they important to you?"

Alissa sighed heavily. They were good people. She knew that. But even good people can get blindsided when things become personal. House was going home to people who cared. Now they understood that they needed to show it a little more clearly.

-

-

"A consultant?" House stared at her like she was the one who should have been at Trenton. "I will not be a consultant in my own office."

Wilson answered for her, seated forward, stiffly, on her leather office couch. "It's not her fault, House. And it can't be just your office any more. We have to protect the hospital and the patients in it. You are on drug therapy for psychosis."

House snapped at him. "Since when do you write policy?"

_Since Shane has my balls locked in her safe. _"I'm not. I'm just saying-"

Cuddy cut him off. "It's not his fault either. And I'm sorry, but this is not your call."

"I haven't had a hallucination in months. Ask Gooden. Ask Shane."

"That doesn't matter. I'm sorry."

Cuddy hated having to do it, but House could not be allowed to remain a department head. Not if she wanted to keep on Shane's good side. But what she said to House was, "You know that one hallucination that leads to the harm of a patient or harm to yourself, the license of this hospital would be up for review." _You are worth millions. But you're worth your life first. _"I'm sorry. The decision is final. You're going to have to learn to live with it."

"Am I?"

Oh no. She'd expected House's stubbornness to switch into hyper-drive, so she had kept the last Shane card up her sleeve just in case. "If it's any compensation, the consultant position pays double what you earned before." _You're worth it._

After a year at Trenton, House would have serious doctor bills. He needed the money.

Cuddy held out the key to his office - to House and Foreman's office. House accepted it grudgingly.

Thrusting it deep in his jeans pocket, he stood and gimped toward her office doors. "Tell him to stay away from my stereo."

Cuddy watched him limp away down the hall to the elevator. A new man off to his old digs.

A fresh start. New cases, new troubles and, Cuddy was gratified to know, new House-special arguments were afoot.

Brand new day. Same old House.

Let the healing begin.

XXXXXXXXXXX

END

Goal: Next part of One Small Consequence by August 9th.


End file.
